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Beautiful typography, strategic use of colors and graphics, and obstruction-free aesthetics devoid of visual clutter are a few of the characteristics shared among web designs that are clean and simple.

In this collection, you’ll discover a few excellent web designs that are clean, simple and elegant.

Here are related collections you should also check out:

• 50 Beautiful Clean and Simple Web Designs
• 40 Beautiful Examples of Minimalism in Web Design
• On Design Instruct: Visual Inspiration: 30 Clean and Elegant Web Designs

1. Nizo

2. Decorated Playlists

3. TH= SUM

4. Red Pop

5. DBA

6. Food Sense

7. For The Record

8. Vee Lee

9. Kettle

10. Makr Carry Goods

11. Hocus Focus

12. InfinVision

13. Ed Nacional

14. Idea Exhibit

15. 8 Faces

16. MCQ

17. Mister

18. Tobias Bjerrome Ahlin

19. 37signals

20. Marlon Medau

21. The Touch Agency

22. Yaron Schoen

23. Jeremy Gleave

24. Bestwork

25. Linda Dong

26. enjoythis

27. co: collective

28. Stiff Rowlands

29. 3Degrees

30. Girlfriend

Related Content

• Minimalism in Web Design: A Guide
• 20 Beautiful Minimalist WordPress Themes
• Create a Slick and Minimalist Web Layout in Photoshop
• Related categories: Design Showcase / Inspiration and Web Design

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Themify builds professional WordPress themes that are …

Log in to your Access All Areas account to read the rest of this post.

Not a member? Becoming an Access All Areas member gives you the ability to view exclusive members-only content just like this. The premium category is already packed full of discount codes and useful design resources, and there’s plenty more to come! Find out more about becoming a member, or take a peek at what’s available to premium members so far.

Advertise here with BSA

This is a guest post by Konstantin Kovshenin — a WordPress core contributor, developer and consultant. Editor in chief of Theme.fm — tutorials, tips and tricks on WordPress themes and plugins, setup, security and performance, as well as WordPress consulting. Follow Konstantin on Twitter and don’t hesitate to poke him should you need any help.

WordPress themes (both free and paid) nowadays come bundled with a lot of different kind of options — color schemes, custom post types, portfolio pages, contact forms, custom shortcodes and much more. These are the kind of things developers usually offer to their users, but what do they get in return? Well if it’s a paid theme they obviously get some money and if it’s a free one, donations are more common. But there’s one thing you always get in return as a WordPress theme (or plugin) author, and that’s awareness.

Whether it’s yours, or your brand’s, awareness is what gets people to know you in the community, therefore building trust. Trust brings you more visitors to your website or blog, more chances of getting hired for a project and of course a little bit of fame and respect.

Today’s topic is a Dashboard Feed Reader, which is quite a simple widget hanging in your admin dashboard screen, showing the latest stories from your blog. Such widgets often drive more traffic to your website and gets people to read (at least) your headlines directly from their WordPress admin panel. A dashboard reader is a great way to announce new versions of your themes or plugins, as well as promote your new products.

People often think that dashboard readers are distracting or annoying, but the good thing about WordPress is that the Dashboard is actually configurable. In only a couple of clicks, any user can enable or disable any of their dashboard widgets, leaving on screen only the stuff that’s important to them. It’s done via the Screen Options button at the top right of the Dashboard page. So dashboard readers are way more loyal and user friendly than hard-coded links or banners on the front end of your theme or plugin.

Understanding Dashboard Widgets

Dashboard widgets in WordPress are actually meta boxes. They’re used in other places too, like the Edit Post or Page screen. They can be dragged around, shown or hidden from the Screen Options menu, collapsed and expanded by hitting the tiny arrow on the right side of the box titles. But hey, you should probably know that already!

Meta boxes are registered with the add_meta_box function but the ones on the Dashboard screen have a function of their own called wp_add_dashboard_widget which should be used during the wp_dashboard_setup WordPress action. So with that in mind, let’s go ahead and write some code.

Creating a New Dashboard Widget

In this tutorial I’ll be creating a dashboard feed reader for Theme.fm. The reader can then be bundled in a theme or plugin and the implementation doesn’t differ at all. So in your plugin file or the functions.php file of your theme, type in the following snippet.

It’s quite simple to understand what it does. I’ve got two functions, one for the dashboard setup and another one for the actual content. The content function is used as a callback during the setup of the widget, while the setup function is used in an action as I mentioned earlier. You can furthermore nest this into an admin_init action, since the dashboard is not available elsewhere, but that won’t have any noticeable impact on your site’s performance.

If you browse to your Dashboard at this stage, you’ll see a new widget called Latest from Theme.fm with the contents that we wrote in the second function. Guess what? You’re done! With the widget, that is… That’s all there is to it adding new dashboard widgets, you can move it around, expand or collapse it, and even turn it off and back on from the Screen Options panel.

Now, before you start shipping this piece of code with all your new themes and plugins, let’s fill it in with some actual content. You can go ahead with “lorem ipsum” but I suggest getting the content from your RSS feed, so that’s what we’ll do next.

Gathering Content From Your RSS Feed

WordPress itself comes bundled with SimplePie and FeedCache to work with the internal stuff, which means that we can use the exact same functions for our own functions. SimplePie is quite easy to work with as you’ll see in a second. WordPress allows a neat function called fetch_feed which could be used out of the box, provides feed parsing and caching and all that for free, without any extra coding. Go ahead and try it out in that content area where you were about to stick “lorem ipsum”

This will print all the feed contents (if there was no error retrieving them) in a nicely structured object. Get familiar with the structure, see what content is available and what’s not. There are neat SimplePie functions that we can use against that object to retrieve the data in the format we want, like dates for instance.

To spare you the hassle, here’s what my content function looks like after implementing the feed contents:

So double check the $feed variable in case it returned an error. Set the maximum number of items to yield to 5 and then, with a simple foreach loop, walk through all the items and print them out in a nice looking way — with permalinks, dates and descriptions.

That’s about it, that’s how easy it is to use SimplePie inside WordPress and again, caching is given to you for free, without even having to activate it or whatsoever, so if you refresh the dashboard screen you won’t notice any lags at all! Here’s what your new dashboard screen should look like, now with the new feed reader:

Congratulations, you’ve just built yourself a feed reader, which you can bundle in your themes and plugins, free and paid ones. You just got your users to read your blog directly from their admin panels, unless the deactivate you of course

Conclusion

So in this tutorial you’ve seen how to create your very own dashboard feed reader, getting more readers to your blog and awareness to you or your brand. In only a few lines of code, we’ve registered a new dashboard widget, then used SimplePie to fetch an RSS feed and display the content, with built-in caching.

A word of caution is that if you’re planning to bundle the reader in numerous themes and plugins, think about what will happen if somebody activates one of your theme, together with three of your plugins? You don’t want your users to end up with four dashboard readers, right? There are numerous techniques to avoid this, my favorite one is constants. I basically wrapped up the whole widget code into a class which I initialize during admin_init. I then wrapped the code into a simple if statement, like this:

Including the same constant in every theme and plugin you ship, you’ll make sure that only one instance of the feed reader is created. You might also want to use the class_exists PHP function if you’re planning to use the same class names for your reader in all the themes and plugins.

Well, that’s about it! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and make sure you use it with caution, plus test before shipping. Thank you so much for reading and hope to see you again soon!

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

How to: Create a Dashboard Feed Reader for Your WordPress Theme or Plugin

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Advertise here with BSA

This is a guest post by Konstantin Kovshenin — a WordPress core contributor, developer and consultant. Editor in chief of Theme.fm — tutorials, tips and tricks on WordPress themes and plugins, setup, security and performance, as well as WordPress consulting. Follow Konstantin on Twitter and don’t hesitate to poke him should you need any help.

WordPress themes (both free and paid) nowadays come bundled with a lot of different kind of options — color schemes, custom post types, portfolio pages, contact forms, custom shortcodes and much more. These are the kind of things developers usually offer to their users, but what do they get in return? Well if it’s a paid theme they obviously get some money and if it’s a free one, donations are more common. But there’s one thing you always get in return as a WordPress theme (or plugin) author, and that’s awareness.

Whether it’s yours, or your brand’s, awareness is what gets people to know you in the community, therefore building trust. Trust brings you more visitors to your website or blog, more chances of getting hired for a project and of course a little bit of fame and respect.

Today’s topic is a Dashboard Feed Reader, which is quite a simple widget hanging in your admin dashboard screen, showing the latest stories from your blog. Such widgets often drive more traffic to your website and gets people to read (at least) your headlines directly from their WordPress admin panel. A dashboard reader is a great way to announce new versions of your themes or plugins, as well as promote your new products.

People often think that dashboard readers are distracting or annoying, but the good thing about WordPress is that the Dashboard is actually configurable. In only a couple of clicks, any user can enable or disable any of their dashboard widgets, leaving on screen only the stuff that’s important to them. It’s done via the Screen Options button at the top right of the Dashboard page. So dashboard readers are way more loyal and user friendly than hard-coded links or banners on the front end of your theme or plugin.

Understanding Dashboard Widgets

Dashboard widgets in WordPress are actually meta boxes. They’re used in other places too, like the Edit Post or Page screen. They can be dragged around, shown or hidden from the Screen Options menu, collapsed and expanded by hitting the tiny arrow on the right side of the box titles. But hey, you should probably know that already!

Meta boxes are registered with the add_meta_box function but the ones on the Dashboard screen have a function of their own called wp_add_dashboard_widget which should be used during the wp_dashboard_setup WordPress action. So with that in mind, let’s go ahead and write some code.

Creating a New Dashboard Widget

In this tutorial I’ll be creating a dashboard feed reader for Theme.fm. The reader can then be bundled in a theme or plugin and the implementation doesn’t differ at all. So in your plugin file or the functions.php file of your theme, type in the following snippet.

It’s quite simple to understand what it does. I’ve got two functions, one for the dashboard setup and another one for the actual content. The content function is used as a callback during the setup of the widget, while the setup function is used in an action as I mentioned earlier. You can furthermore nest this into an admin_init action, since the dashboard is not available elsewhere, but that won’t have any noticeable impact on your site’s performance.

If you browse to your Dashboard at this stage, you’ll see a new widget called Latest from Theme.fm with the contents that we wrote in the second function. Guess what? You’re done! With the widget, that is… That’s all there is to it adding new dashboard widgets, you can move it around, expand or collapse it, and even turn it off and back on from the Screen Options panel.

Now, before you start shipping this piece of code with all your new themes and plugins, let’s fill it in with some actual content. You can go ahead with “lorem ipsum” but I suggest getting the content from your RSS feed, so that’s what we’ll do next.

Gathering Content From Your RSS Feed

WordPress itself comes bundled with SimplePie and FeedCache to work with the internal stuff, which means that we can use the exact same functions for our own functions. SimplePie is quite easy to work with as you’ll see in a second. WordPress allows a neat function called fetch_feed which could be used out of the box, provides feed parsing and caching and all that for free, without any extra coding. Go ahead and try it out in that content area where you were about to stick “lorem ipsum”

This will print all the feed contents (if there was no error retrieving them) in a nicely structured object. Get familiar with the structure, see what content is available and what’s not. There are neat SimplePie functions that we can use against that object to retrieve the data in the format we want, like dates for instance.

To spare you the hassle, here’s what my content function looks like after implementing the feed contents:

So double check the $feed variable in case it returned an error. Set the maximum number of items to yield to 5 and then, with a simple foreach loop, walk through all the items and print them out in a nice looking way — with permalinks, dates and descriptions.

That’s about it, that’s how easy it is to use SimplePie inside WordPress and again, caching is given to you for free, without even having to activate it or whatsoever, so if you refresh the dashboard screen you won’t notice any lags at all! Here’s what your new dashboard screen should look like, now with the new feed reader:

Congratulations, you’ve just built yourself a feed reader, which you can bundle in your themes and plugins, free and paid ones. You just got your users to read your blog directly from their admin panels, unless the deactivate you of course

Conclusion

So in this tutorial you’ve seen how to create your very own dashboard feed reader, getting more readers to your blog and awareness to you or your brand. In only a few lines of code, we’ve registered a new dashboard widget, then used SimplePie to fetch an RSS feed and display the content, with built-in caching.

A word of caution is that if you’re planning to bundle the reader in numerous themes and plugins, think about what will happen if somebody activates one of your theme, together with three of your plugins? You don’t want your users to end up with four dashboard readers, right? There are numerous techniques to avoid this, my favorite one is constants. I basically wrapped up the whole widget code into a class which I initialize during admin_init. I then wrapped the code into a simple if statement, like this:

Including the same constant in every theme and plugin you ship, you’ll make sure that only one instance of the feed reader is created. You might also want to use the class_exists PHP function if you’re planning to use the same class names for your reader in all the themes and plugins.

Well, that’s about it! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and make sure you use it with caution, plus test before shipping. Thank you so much for reading and hope to see you again soon!

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

How to: Create a Dashboard Feed Reader for Your WordPress Theme or Plugin

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Another thing to keep in mind is that this article is an observation, not in any way should it be used as professional advice. The most important thing in designing a website is how the purpose, design, and the content itself complement each other.

Side Navigation (or vertical navigation)

Side navigation uses too much space, with today’s websites that display advertisements you can’t just enter the two in a contest to see who wins. Most of the time, the side bar is reserved for advertisement and widgets. Go to ThemeForest or other WordPress themes marketplace and you’ll see that 9/10 of the items don’t have side navigation, be it left or right.

So, when is side navigation practical? In the case of TheNextWeb, since their articles deal with a very wide range of categories from daily events to technology news to just about anything on the internet, instead of placing their categories at the top, they designed it so that it shows on the left side of the website. Imagine having all those categories at the top.

Such is also the case with Yahoo.com, the navigation is on the right side. If you have noticed, throughout the years they have added and removed menus without really changing the layout to accommodate new menus. This is the good part of having side navigation, you won’t find space lacking.

If you haven’t noticed yet, right-handed people are usually more comfortable looking at the left side of their monitor. This is the reason why websites like 1stwebdesigner have their content on the left side, because it’s much comfortable that way. So, it’s a bad thing to place the navigation on your left side, the right side is usually better, which is also the place for advertisements and other widgets.

Top Navigation (or horizontal navigation)

The placement of your main navigation at the top of the page, or just below the logo, should be carefully thought of not only for the present design and purpose, but for future expansion. No users/readers really like a 90% redesign, it just feels so alienating. Some elements of the original design should be kept, for familiarity’s sake.

Today, most websites use top navigation with the few exceptions of minor menus on their side bar, like in the case of Facebook and Google+, and other large websites. With today’s jQuery, CSS, and other effects plugins, designers can now create a drop down menu to fill every categories with countless sub-categories.

(a screenshot of 1stwebdesigner within 1stwebdesigner, it’s like Inception!)

So, is Side Navigation still practical?

For websites it might not be, but for tools and services like WordPress, your mailbox, and other end-side platforms, side navigation is still useful, but for blogs and websites that are updated regularly, it is common practiced that their navigation is on the top.

The rise of mobile device users is exponential, but mobile versions of websites aren’t. Although there are websites that look the same on different screen sizes, having side navigation looks bad because of the small display. Just recently, I browsed many websites with drop-down menus (like 1stwebdesigner) using my girlfriend’s iPhone. I noticed that I can’t make the drop down appear, so I was stuck. In which case, I suggest you guys use jQuery Mobile.

Things to Consider Before Designing

This is how reddit rolls, by clicking My Reddits a drop down appears containing all of the reddits you are subscribed to. It has both vertical and horizontal navigation. Notice that the horizontal (top) navigation is harder to read, and that the vertical navigation is easier. Or is it just me?

Always think of the future of the website and how will it affect the design. Present content, purpose, and design should be weighed and looked at how will they be months or several years upon conception.

During the first web development class I had in college I asked myself whether I should place my navigation on the top or at the side. I chose the right side. Bad move. Turns out, I only had to place a few pages for navigation and it occupied the whole 200px from top to bottom.

It depends on how the website’s designed. If it is aesthetically pleasing, why not?  Sometimes, listing items from top to bottom gives a lot of emphasis on the top part.

But, meh. You’ll end up having a top navigation 90% of the time.

Your Take?

I’m pretty sure that you have your own say on this topic that the world would want to know. Is horizontal navigation cool and current because we all jumped on the same bandwagon?

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One week from today, we’ll be giving away 500 magnetic business cards to 3 lucky WDD readers.

Magnetic cards may not have been your first choice for your business card but they’re super cool and can be stuck on anyone’s refrigerator door, bulletin boards, and are sure to draw curious looks.

The cards are provided with a 13pt magnet gloss with front printing only.

Read on for more details on how to participate…

Here’s some more information about these magnetic business cards:

UPrinting’s card magnets are made of 13 pt. magnetic card stock and can stick to any metal surface. You can order them in quantities from as low as 25 up to as high as 5,000! The standard turnaround time for them is 6 business days excluding shipping times, though you can also choose to have them on a rush schedule of 4 business days with added fees.

Aside from advertising your services and products, card magnets are also great as giveaways for special events. You can print out calendars and photos on card magnets, making them even more useful and memorable.

Three winners will receive:

• 500 Card Magnets for Three (3) Winners
• 2” x 3.5”
• 13pt Magnet Gloss
• Front Only Printing
• 6 Business Days Turn Around Time
• Free Shipping

To participate, please leave a comment below. Only one comment per person. Duplicate entries will be voided.

We’ll announce the results in one week, on July 27th, 2011. The results will be posted here on WDD and all winners will also be contacted by email for more details.

Thanks to UPrinting for bringing us these great prizes and good luck to all of you…

If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: s2MX9m

10+ WordPress Themes from Theme Kingdom – only $17

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But not all themes are created equal. Differences in quality become more pronounced in free themes, but there’s even a lot of discrepancies in premium themes, both in terms of visual style and actual code.

Below are more than sixty new WordPress themes released since March. Roughly half are premium themes (ranging in price from around $15 to about $70) and half are free.

If you think there are other themes out there released during the same time period that should have been included, please let us know in the comments! Enjoy the collection…

Premium themes

Modest ($39 membership)

Demo | Details

A minimal theme with beautiful typography and subtle gradients from Elegant Themes.

Envisioned ($39 membership)

Demo | Details

A powerful portfolio theme from Elegant Themes that enables creation of professional, multi-media galleries. There are three color schemes included (blue, purple, and green).

Chameleon ($39 membership)

Demo | Details

Chameleon is a simple, professional theme from Elegant Themes with tons of customization options that don’t require any coding.

Feather ($39 membership)

Demo | Details

Feather, from Elegant Themes, is a light and airy theme with subtle details and textures that add interest. It has a ton of easy customization options included.

Premiere ($70+)

Demo | Details

A video-based theme from WooThemes that is custom post driven, keeping your video posts separate from your regular blog posts.

Kaboodle ($70+)

Demo | Details

Kaboodle is a trendy business theme with lots of customization options, from WooThemes.

Faultpress ($100)

Demo | Details

Faultpress, from WooThemes, turns WordPress into a full-featured ticketing application.

Briefed ($70+)

Demo | Details

Briefed is a minimalist theme designed by Cameron Moll and offered by WooThemes. It has a modular layout and a completely customizable home page.

Elemin ($39)

Demo | Details

Elemin, from Themify, has a clean, fluid and responsive design created using Google fonts, CSS3 and HTML5.

Folo ($)

Demo | Details

Folo is a clean business and portfolio theme from Themify. There are a total of twenty-one grid and list layout options included.

Edge ($70)

Demo | Details

Edge, from WP Bandit, is a magazine-style theme that comes with fourteen different styles.

Lifestyle ($49)

Demo | Details

Lifestyle, from ThemeFuse, is a magazine-style WP theme built on the Fuse framework.

Craft ($49)

Demo | Details

Craft is a minimalist portfolio theme from Theme Trust. It includes slideshows on the home page and project pages, as well as intro animation for portfolio thumbnails.

Old Post ($50+)

Demo | Details

Old Post is a grid-based theme from Obox that includes infinite scrolling rather than pagination of posts.

Abbreviate ($50+)

Demo | Details

Abbreviate, from Obox, comes with thee different color schemes (light, dark, and brown), a typography manager, and tumblog functionality.

The Bernard ($50+)

Demo | Details

The Bernard, from Obox and designed by Brian Hoff, is a minimalist magazine-style theme with a custom slider and three color schemes.

Tanjun ($49+)

Demo | Details

Tanjun, from BizzThemes, is a clean, professional theme that has a simple and fast slider and a variety of post formats.

Immense ($49+)

Demo | Details

Immense, from Graph Paper Press, is a minimalist photography theme that adjusts automatically to the size of the browser.

Debut ($75)

Demo | Details

Press75′s Debut is a multimedia-ready theme that’s well-suited for news, magazine, and portfolio websites.

Luxuos ($35)

Demo | Details

Luxuos is a stylish, flexible theme designed by ThemeShaper. It’s suitable for corporate sites, portfolios, and photography or other creative sites.

Nuance ($35)

Demo | Details

Nuance, available on ThemeForest, is a simple and flexible theme that includes the “Content Composer” for creating professional-looking pages quickly and easily.

Pont ($35)

Demo | Details

Pont is a modern multipurpose WP theme that includes multiple page templates, unlimited colors, 18 background patterns, and much more.

Halo ($30)

Demo | Details

Halo is a stunning, minimalistic portfolio theme that includes full slider configuration, 14 different predefined theme styles, unlimited color variations, 2 image popup effects, and more.

Triumph ($35)

Demo | Details

Triumph is a simple theme well-suited for business, application, and portfolio sites. It includes 10 color variations, several page templates, and more.

Brick + Mason ($35)

Demo | Details

Brick + Mason is a minimalist theme perfect for photographers or designers. It uses the jQuery masonry plugin to rearrange content to fit the browser size.

Gridlocked ($35)

Demo | Details

Gridlocked was designed specifically for creatives, and has a grid-based minimalistic style that supports post formatting and layout rearrangement.

Clear Theme ($35)

Demo | Details

Clear Theme is a multipurpose theme with a modern, minimalist style. It’s suitable for blogs, portfolios, business and gallery sites.

The Cotton ($35)

Demo | Details

The Cotton is a minimalist WP theme powered by the Pexeto Panel, for easy customization.

WordPress Aid ($35)

Demo | Details

WordPress Aid is a theme specifically designed for use by charities and non-profits. It puts the focus on fundraising and alerting visitors to important issues.

Eptonic – Beyond the Limits ($35)

Demo | Details

This theme includes the “Content Composer” for creating custom-designed pages. It also includes great portfolio styles and options. Portfolios are filterable and similar projects are shown on the detail posts.

Less is More ($15)

Demo | Details

Less is More is a versatile magazine theme from 177Designs. It’s coded in HTML5 and includes 8 color schemes.

Free Themes

gRID! Theme

Demo | Details

A minimalist grid theme with a four-column layout and automatic post thumbnails.

Praseodymiumic

Demo | Details

A portfolio theme from Padd Solutions that includes custom typography, custom front page widgets, and more.

Modern

Demo | Details

Modern is a minimalist grid theme from dessign.

Lamonica Magazine

Demo | Details

Lamonica Magazine is a simple grid theme with a content slider and multiple banner ad slots.

Maxime

Demo | Details

Maxime is a magazine-style theme with a dark color scheme from MagPress.

Horcrux

Demo | Details

Horcrux is a fixed-width, two column layout with custom menus and featured thumbnails.

Scylla Lite

Demo | Details

Scylla Lite is a simple three-column theme with four skins, a content slider, two different layouts, and more.

Beauty & Clean

Demo | Details

A minimalist WP theme with both premium and free versions. The free version includes five different page templates, custom post types, and custom widgets.

Fiver

Demo | Details

Fiver is a minimalist, image-free WP theme written in HTML5 and CSS3.

Corner

Demo | Details

Corner is inspired by Windows Phone 7 and includes built-in Ajax navigation.

Neuro

Demo | Details

Neuro is the light, free version of Neuro Pro, from CyberChimps. It includes two color schemes, two modern background images, and support for CSS3 and HTML5.

Leathernote

Demo | Details

Leathernote has a notepad design and has custom menus, works with “Aside” and “Gallery” post types, and has some special formatting for sticky posts and gallery thumbnails.

Ghostbird

Demo | Details

Ghostbird is a simple one-column theme with multiple textures utilized in the design.

Grey Opaque

Demo | Details

Grey Opaque is an elegant grey theme for WP 3.0 and higher that includes a single sidebar, and post meta information on the opposite side.

Showcase

Demo | Details

Showcase is a bold theme with custom typography that’s well suited for portfolio and gallery sites.

Desire

Demo | Details

Desire is a two column minimalist theme with tons of features, including three layout styles, flexible width, custom header, background and logo, tabbed content, and more.

zeePersonal

Demo | Details

zeePersonal comes with 9 different color schemes (and a custom color picker for even more options), custom logo upload, and 3 styles of featured post sliders.

Minimatica

Demo | Details

A minimalist theme with an image gallery slider that makes it perfect for portfolio sites. Also works well as a podcasting site, or everyday blogging.

Yoko

Demo | Details

Yoko is a responsive WP theme design by Elmastudio, available from Smashing Magazine. It’s coded in HTML5 and CSS3, and supports WP post formats, theme options page with custom background and header images, and optional sub menus.

Duster

Demo | Details

Duster is a free theme from Auttomatic. It has a unique page template that turns your blog into a showcase of different kinds of posts and supports other customization options.

Light and Modern

Demo | Details

Light and Modern is a colorful, universal theme with modern menu and headline styling.

CSSFever

Demo | Details

CSSFever is a clean and modern pure CSS theme with no images.

Splendio

Demo | Details

Splendio is another theme offered by Smashing Magazine, based on the Twenty Ten WordPress theme.

zeeCompany

Demo | Details

zeeCompany is a clean theme with 10 different color schemes, 3 featured post sliders, and lots of customization options.

TwentyXS

Demo | Details

TwentyXS is a narrow, single-column minimalist theme reminiscent of the Twenty Ten theme.

Lepidoptera

Demo | Details

A minimalist black, white and gray theme with a curved header image.

Diminishing

Demo | Details

Diminishing is a simple two-column theme with a purple and orange color scheme and large header image.

Shaken Grid

Demo | Details

Shaken Grid uses the jQuery Masonry plugin to rearrange content vertically and horizontally depending on your browser size. It comes with two color schemes, a theme options panel, gallery layout, and more. There’s also a premium version available.

WordPress Diary Theme

Demo | Details

Diary is coded in HTML5 and CSS3, includes built-in pagination and the jQuery PrettyPhoto lightbox plugin, and uses Google web fonts.

The Columnist

Demo | Details

The Columnist is a grid based WP theme with a newspaper column layout, an ordered typographic hierarchy, and CSS3 and jQuery extras.

Agency

Demo | Details

Agency is a free magazine-style theme from Fearless Flyer Web Design. It has a very clean and modern design with beautiful typography.

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman. Disclaimer: Some links contain affiliate links.

What’s your favorite new theme from the past few months? Did we exclude any you think should have been included? Let us know in the comments!

If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: s2MX9m

10+ WordPress Themes from Theme Kingdom – only $17

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The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.

So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.

Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…

Green, bad

Easy navigation

Find me guilty, please!

Can you relate to these situations? Please share your funny stories and comments below…

If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: s2MX9m

10+ WordPress Themes from Theme Kingdom – only $17

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WordPressThemeShock has recently released a design bundle which includes many freebies.

It is totally free to download and not offered for a limited time.

The bundle consists of:

10 WordPress themes

The themes have many custom options like 3 different image sliders, dropdown-menus, image gallery, contact form with captcha, etc.

750 high-quality icons

The icons include the most important items to be used in web apps like actions, files, media and much more. They come in 5 different size and in .PNG + .PSD formats.

Many design elements

And, there are many other design freebies like site templates, buttons or vector elements.

Special Downloads:
Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets

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SSLmatic – Cheap SSL Certificates (from $19.99/year)

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Article writing is more than just sitting down and writing out your thoughts. In order to get people to keep on reading you have to almost instantly capture their interest. You must get your reader interested enough and curious enough to be able to get your message across to them.

The most important ingredient in putting together an article is creativity. Some people are just naturally very creative, while others go crazy while suffering from a seemingly endless bout of writer’s block. It can be extremely frustrating and aggravating when the words that you are looking for just don’t seem to want to come. But you must learn to relax and let them come.

Writing words that magically transform themselves into an image in the mind of the reader is an art form in and of itself. Your words need to be crisp, clear, and concise. You can use metaphors to help yourself out, but the way an article is woven together word by word and sentence by sentence is how it develops its essence and personality.

You are sitting there and you just can’t seem to get any words to come to mind, what do you do now? Since the beginning of the written word, all writers have faced this situation. There is no perfect or guaranteed answer to the problem of writers block. One secret that I use, as well as a lot of other writers, is to keep a notebook near you at all times and write down any ideas as they come to you. Write down everything you think of, everything you see, and everything you hear that might prove useful. You can use this notebook for future reference when you are in need of an idea.

Another thing that you can try is to simply relax and empty your mind. We all from time to time end up with a head full of life’s little worries. If you are having some sort of problem or difficulty in your life it will make it very hard for you to concentrate and keep focused on what you are trying to do. Every time you sit down to write, take a moment to relax and clear those troubling thoughts from your mind.

The area in which you work is very important and can have a direct effect on the quality of your work. A cluttered workspace can be a distraction and hinder your productivity. This doesn’t mean however that you have to have a sterile and drab work area. Put up some pictures that inspire you. Place some small objects on your desk the bring back those kinds of memories that you just can’t help but smile when you think of them. A peaceful work area will greatly increase your output.

Figure out how you work best

A good place to start is the speed with which you write. Some writers once they get going, the words just fly across the paper. Other writers are much slower and more methodical. You need to find your own pace. Some writers having a never-ending cup of coffee always on the desk, while some have been known to sip on a glass of wine or put away a few beers while they write. There is no right or wrong way, there is only you finding your own way.

And if it all gets to be too much, and no matter how hard you should try the words just won’t come, get up and walk away from it. Take a break, go for a walk, do something that is unusual and will break up your normal routine. Once you have let go of all those little things that are bothering you, the writing process will flow effortlessly.

About the Author

Thomas Alling runs a blog where he writes about how you can make money from blogging. He also writes articles in the internet marketing niche. To read more from Mr. Alling, visit his blog MakeMoneyHelper.com

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

As a subscribe reader of Blogsessive, this is my gift to you: a guide to corporate blogging (but not only) that will help you in your blogging adventures! Download now, for FREE!

©2008-2010 Copyright by Blogsessive – Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so that we can take legal action immediately.

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For those people who have been using WordPress for years, the first plugin that they would recommend anyone starting out with the WordPress format would be the All in One SEO Pack. All in One SEO Pack was one of the first comprehensive WordPress plugins and since it was launched has been downloaded over 8 million times. It is without doubt the daddy of all WordPress plugins and the one most people download first when they set up their WordPress blog.

All in One SEO Pack allows you to quickly and simply configure the meta tags, meta description and Title for each and every post that you write for your WordPress site. This is particularly useful because WordPress will use your blog tag as a keyword. Thus the plugin is brilliant for customizing every post or webpage to get the maximum benefits of optimization. This automation of the SEO process is brilliant for beginners, because it not only generates the correct tags but it also avoids duplicate content.

However, the problem with being the top dog is that someone always comes along and tries to steal your crown. And lately another SEO package has been getting a lot of attention. The WordPress SEO by Yoast is the most recent, and certainly most discussed, SEO plugin around. Boasting a whole raft of new features it promised to be less high maintenance than All in One SEO Pack. And it comes with a good pedigree with Yoast and his team being a reliable source and having been downloaded a great deal as well.

Indeed it is well designed and very easy to use with a bunch of great options for tweaking your search engine optimisation settings. The page that takes the place of the old All in One SEO Pack page works extremely well and allows you to simply customize the titles for differing page views, with numerous options for flexibility. However, there are also some problems with Yoast at this stage, that still need ironing out. Some category tags and templates didn’t work once the plugin was enabled, and after the installation of the plugin the category permalinks also stopped working. In addition there were problems with sitemap functionality and a few other minor teething problems that still need to be sorted out.

To be fair Yoast’s SEO plugin has not been around anywhere near the same length of time as All in One SEO Pack so it needs some time to bed in. But for a plugin that does one basic job – generating and organizing meta description, title and keyword tags – and does it well, All in One SEO Pack is still the only plugin worth installing.

About the Author

Alex Simmonds is a copywriter and journalist based in the UK.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

As a subscribe reader of Blogsessive, this is my gift to you: a guide to corporate blogging (but not only) that will help you in your blogging adventures! Download now, for FREE!

©2008-2010 Copyright by Blogsessive – Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so that we can take legal action immediately.

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Hello friends and readers of Blogsessive! Today I have an announcement to make and with this occasion, launch a debate with you, Blogsessive’s community.

Blogsessive has been around for a while, sometimes more active, sometimes less active, but right now it’s time for a major change. And this change will start off with a redesign of the blog.

Since I’ve always treasured the voice of my community, I’m launching an open debate (this post will remain sticky) on this step in Blogsessive’s existence with a few questions:

• What do you like and dislike most about the current design?
• What would you want to see implemented in the future design?
• Are there any elements/functionalities that you find hard to access right now?

Aside from these questions, feel free and encourage to express your opinions as feedback is always kindly appreciated. Also, another change of policy is to open up Blogsessive to more guest post articles. It is an excellent way to help Blogsessive’s readers get to know each other better and I am 100% positive that everyone has a wonderful point of view, experience and tips to share with us all. So, go ahead and write a wonderful guest post and contact me.

Lets talk

Looking forward to reading your comments and setting the base of Blogsessive’s future together!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

As a subscribe reader of Blogsessive, this is my gift to you: a guide to corporate blogging (but not only) that will help you in your blogging adventures! Download now, for FREE!

©2008-2010 Copyright by Blogsessive – Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so that we can take legal action immediately.

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Facebook and blogging, if both are done right, can be a powerful combination. Linking up your Facebook Page with your blog is a great way to get your blog readers more involved with your Facebook community, and it’s also a great chance to let your Facebook fans know what’s going on over on your blog.

It’s not difficult to link up your Facebook Page and your blog, in fact some of it can be set once and then will automatically continue to work for you. It’s just a matter of getting the pieces in place so that both your blog and your Facebook Page are communicating with each other and your people can easily connect with you where they are most comfortable interacting.

Let’s start with some things you can do on your Facebook Page.

Automatically Post Your Blog Updates

Every time you write a new blog post, you can have Facebook automatically publish that on your Facebook Page. This is a great way to let your fans know that there is new content over on the blog, and they can get a quick sneak peek to see if it’s something they want to check out or not.

All you need is a Facebook Page app that posts from an RSS feed. RSS Graffiti is a good example of one that is completely free and easy to set up.

Blog Directly In Facebook

Most bloggers will want to continue to have an external blog outside of Facebook, however, Facebook’s Notes app can act like a blog inside Facebook. With Notes you can write and post an article, include images and links, and post it right to your Facebook Page Wall. The Notes app is automatically added to any new Page, so you can easily find it by going in to the Apps section in your Edit Page backend.

The Notes app can also be used to import your blog and works great if your blog is primarily written. {Videos do not import properly, so if your blog has a lot of video, then I recommend just using the RSS Graffiti app for your blog.} The Notes app will import your new blog posts right into Notes, so that it’s now in your Facebook Page and your fans can comment on it there.

There are also a number of things you can set up on your blog to point to and connect to your Facebook Page.

Facebook Share Button

There are a number of good plugins for WordPress that add a Facebook Share button to each post on your blog. You can have one that shows the number of shares, or one that simply has the Share button with no count.

A Facebook Share button is a quick and easy way for readers to share your post if they like it. They are able to add their own comment, and Facebook pulls in the title, URL, short description and thumbnail, so it gives your blog some great exposure to the Share-er’s friends.

Facebook Comments

Adding Facebook comments to your blog can be a great way to bring some more interactivity with Facebook to your site. Facebook comments sync between your blog and Facebook so that user’s comments are posted to their Personal Profile when they comment.

Readers who are not on Facebook are not able to comment, however, so some people use Facebook Comments alongside the regular WordPress comments, or only use the Facebook Comments on certain pages of their blog.

Facebook Like

You can also add a simple Like button to each blog post. When readers click Like, it publishes a quick story to their profile saying that they Like it. The Like button also typically shows readers if any of their friends already like the post, so it can be a great way to show them that their friends are already interacting with your blog {if they actually are, of course}.

The Like button doesn’t let them add a comment or share the actual post, but it does give your post just a bit of visibility on Facebook. And visibility equals new fans and more interaction from current fans. Use it as well as the Facebook Share button to give your readers two easy ways give you some Facebook love.

Facebook Page Icon or Like Box

Many of your blog readers would love to be fans on Facebook, as well. Give them the option to do so right from your blog with a Facebook Page Like Box, which has the Like button right on your site, so they don’t have to leave your blog.

Or if you prefer to have them leave your site to go to Facebook, then use a Facebook icon that links to your Facebook Page. You can use just a plain text link, too, but if people are looking for how to connect with you on Facebook, they’ll be looking for the blue Facebook “F”. Don’t be shy about displaying that icon!

How to Find Apps and Plugins

If you’re not familiar with finding and installing new Facebook Page apps and WordPress plugins, just start doing some searching. You can use the search bar in Facebook to search for apps – just start typing what you’re looking for and Facebook will show you a list of suggestions. If looking for WordPress plugins, you can do a search on WordPress.org for plugins.

And don’t forget that Google is your best friend. You can search for Facebook apps and WordPress plugins right in Google, as well, and will find recommendations from others, as well as the actual apps and plugins on Facebook and WordPress.

Your Turn

Are you already using some of these tools and techniques? Which new ones are you going to start implementing? And are there any other techniques that you would like to add to the list? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Image Credit: Anirudh Koul

About the Author

Jess is a quirky entrepreneur who helps fellow quirks EXPLODE their business on Facebook. She loves all things Facebook and being able to help business owners learn how to build an active audience to grow their business through Facebook. If you’d like to learn more, you can attend her FREE webinar, The Facebook Explosion Blueprint, or join The Facebook Explosion community on Facebook. You can also follow Jess’ blog and website over at www.jessilicious.com.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

As a subscribe reader of Blogsessive, this is my gift to you: a guide to corporate blogging (but not only) that will help you in your blogging adventures! Download now, for FREE!

©2008-2010 Copyright by Blogsessive – Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so that we can take legal action immediately.

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Hello everyone! My name is Alex. Most of you, readers of Blogsessive know my name and clearly know what this blog is all about and that’s great. Others don’t and that’s fine too. But there are those cases in which not knowing who I am is a bad thing, and yes, now I’m talking to you Mr./Ms. Internet/Email Marketer. Unfortunately, I have absolutely NO idea what your big business opportunity was all about because I have just deleted your email. Why, you ask? Because…

My name is Alex

Not admin, not webmaster. I have a name and if you really want to reach ME, think of me as a person with an identity. I am not defined by my status in regards to how I technically operate this blog or website, but by my thoughts, actions, writing and virtually all that in the end constitutes my identity in the eyes of my community. You can start by simply using my name.

My blog is called Blogsessive

Not http://blogsessive.com, not ‘your website’ – the one that you ‘stumbled’ across by some sort of accident and decided to pitch me. Call me arrogant but I love my blog and have put a lot of work and passion into it. Show me respect by using its name, just like you should when addressing me. It is part of my identity and if you did not get it by now, I couldn’t care less about what you have to propose as long as you show that you have no idea who I am, what my blog is about and I’m basically just another ID in your database of contacts.

You did not pitch me with a win-win

The second you decide to pitch me it is clear that you have something to gain. In case you don’t realize, like it or not most times that puts me in a position of power. Make sure you clearly state what you offer and make sure it’s at least decent. Under certain circumstances I will promote stuff out of my own belief because you pointed it out, but statistics say that most likely I’m not running a charity, nor pushing big amounts of BS to my community. Thus, all you have to do is to follow these simple rules:

• Offer something of value to me and my community;
• Offer something of virtually the same value with what you are asking for;
• If you cannot provide any of the above, make sure you state why and think of alternatives.

You did not pitch me with something fit

If you take a moment to browse my blog, you’ll see what it is all about and see if your proposal fits in. I will not go out of my way to help you with something and by doing that, disrupt the flow of this blog. Make sure you pitch me with the right stuff.

So, the next time you pitch me via email and don’t get a reply, know that it went straight to the trash bin and that’s why I have just deleted your business opportunity email.

What should you do?

Other than following the 4 common sense rules above? You could first consider the following relational pattern: Me <-> My blog <-> My community. If you get that, I’m sure you’ll be able to personalize your business opportunity email in less than 5 minutes and chances are that I’ll read it and reply. Also, let me give you an example of how it’s done.

A couple of days ago I was approached by a person offering a subscription to a pretty major website, asking for a review of their service. They used my blog’s name in their pitch and their offer clearly stated what I had to win out if it. A decent free subscription. Yet, their service is not that new to me as it relates to my job of over a decade – a web designer. Being a member of similar services, out of courtesy and respect of their approach I replied back asking for a similar subscription to offer one of my readers too in a contest after I’d review their site. Of course, we came to an agreement and everyone will be happy. It’s just a matter of common sense. And with this, stay tuned to Blogsessive in the next couple of weeks as I’m preparing the contest I previously mentioned.

Photo credits to Dan Mulligan

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

As a subscribe reader of Blogsessive, this is my gift to you: a guide to corporate blogging (but not only) that will help you in your blogging adventures! Download now, for FREE!

©2008-2010 Copyright by Blogsessive – Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so that we can take legal action immediately.

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Whether you’ve always wanted to learn more about WordPress (but never known where to start), or are a seasoned expert looking for advanced tips and tricks, Wptuts+ has you covered. Read on to find out more, meet our expert editor, and hear about how to win $1,000+ of WordPress goodies!

WordPress Tutorials, Tips and Advice

Wptuts+ will provide the amazing quality of tutorials you’ve come to expect from Tuts+, focused toward teaching you everything you need to become a WordPress expert. We have some fantastic content in the works, and you can subscribe in the following ways to ensure you don’t miss out!

• Subscribe to the RSS Feed
• Follow @envatowp on Twitter
• Like Wptuts+ on Facebook

After working as the editor of Webdesigntuts+ for the past few months, your editor — Brandon Jones — will be moving over to share his incredible wealth of WordPress knowledge on Wptuts+!

Brandon Jones is currently the third highest-selling author on ThemeForest, Envato’s marketplace for buying and selling website themes. He couldn’t be more qualified to head up Wptuts+, and I hope you’re looking forward to receiving tips from one of the most successful WordPress developers we’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

$1,200 of Prizes and Goodies Up For Grabs!

To celebrate the launch of our latest Tuts+ site, we’ve organised a fantastic giveaway with some brilliant prizes for anyone who loves WordPress! With a total value of over $1,200, it’s a fantastic collection of resources and subscriptions. Check out the full details, and take part in the contest!

Finally, if you have any feedback or ideas for Wptuts+, we’d love to hear them. Head over to the site and let us know what you’d like to see!

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If you don’t already know about our MightyDeals website, it’s the premier destination for web professionals to get their hands on amazingly discounted deals on products and services.

The deals include software, graphics, WordPress themes, icons and much much more. All deals are available for a limited time only and the discounts can sometimes be as much as 90% off!

In today’s big giveaway, you have a chance to win the world’s hottest gadget today –  a brand new shiny iPad 2!!!

Read on for more details on how to participate…

At MightyDeals, we’ve teamed up with great companies and through the power of bulk purchases and heavy promotion, we’ve managed to negotiate the prices right down, bringing you the best products and services at unbelievable discounts.

To add to this, we now feature even more deals every week and by popular demand, we’ve also started to bring back some our most popular deals, to allow more people the chance to get them.

And there’s even more! We’ve also introduced several awesome free deals, which you can download for a limited time only. Check back often as new ones are constantly being added.

With more variety, more deals, and now with the new free deals, we’re sure you’ll always find something to improve your professional life and career. Check out some of the incredible deals we’re currently running by visiting the MightyDeals website.

In today’s giveaway, you have the chance to win a brand new iPad 2, 16gb in black or white with free shipping to anywhere in the world.

The new iPad 2 features two cameras for FaceTime and HD video recording as well as the brand new dual-core A5 chip. It has an outstanding 10 hour battery life and is even thinner and lighter than its predecessor.

How to participate
To participate you must be a MightyDeals newsletter subscriber (free subscription). If you’ve already subscribed, simply leave a comment below using the same email address that you used to subscribe to MightyDeals. If you’re not yet subscribed, head over to the MightyDeals website and you’ll find the newsletter subscription box at the top of the site.

Double your chances with a tweet:
You can get better your odds of winning and double your chances by sending a tweet about this contest. To do so, click on this link to send out our tweet, and you can then post a second comment with the url of your tweet. (To get the URL of your tweet, sign in to Twitter, click Profile and locate your tweet. Then click on the time stamp link of the tweet and you’ll be redirected to the URL of that tweet).

Terms:

• Only 1 entry per person (or 2 entries if sending our specified tweet)
• No purchase necessary
• Entries must be received by July 12th, 12PM PST
• Contestants must be of majority age in the country where they reside
• Any applicable custom fees/taxes required for receiving the product will be the winner’s responsibility
• iPad 2 will be shipped within a maximum of 60 days of the date of the winner’s announcement
• Contest is void where prohibited by law

Winner announcement
The grand prize winner will be announced on July 13th here on WDD and the winner will also be notified by email.

Good luck to everyone!

If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: s2MX9m

Picons Icons: 500 Royalty-Free Vector Icons

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Also one of the other issues that made it so popular is the amount of WordPress themes available both free and premium. Of course that also represents a problem because finding the perfect theme for your website can be a real hustle with the thousands of templates available. That is why a personal  blog owner can find it particularly hard to find a good theme for his website.

Most great looking WordPress templates are premium and professionally designed. So if you want a good looking WordPress blog you have the option of custom designing a theme or the more affordable premium WordPress theme purchase. Below there’s a selection of 10 premium WordPress themes to make your blog look beautiful.

Demo – More info

Demo – More info

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Get the stock images and vectors you need for your designs on Stutterstock

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One of the neatest things I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing by combining my love for software development and professional blogging is to see how closely tied they are in art, form and function. The marriage couldn’t be more copasetic, and I’ve discovered that they complement each other and I can learn more about each respectively and dependently.

Taking it one step further, I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of a startup that leverages one of the top blogging platforms out there, WordPress, and I’ve spent ample time in the weeds developing both WordPress themes and plugins for the system.

Naturally, I’ve learned a lot and, just like how an auto mechanic knows a car better than the average driver, I’ve been blessed with an insider look into how the blogging system itself talks to the end-user.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: You can become a seriously better blogger if you code even a little bit. Below are a few ways development is similar to blogging.

An Affinity to Order

When you first start out, developing software is like swimming in a pool of ideas that somehow coalesce into something workable, pliable and functional.

As you mature, you find that you’re able to quickly increase your pace of development by systemizing your processes, taking advantage of existing structures, syntax, systems and frameworks to speed things up. That is, you produce order out of chaos.

The more order you bring to a system, the more manageable it will become.

As a blogger, your goal is create order in what you write so that your readers can reasonably understand what you’re saying. It harkens me back to my elementary school years where my teacher required me to create all those outlines before I actually started to write anything. You remember, don’t you?

Practically, this means that your blog posts need to be orderly, written in a pattern, rhythm and cadence that’s acceptable to the audience and the context you’re covering. The more you can lock into the acceptable pattern and order, the better and quicker your writing becomes.

Balance and Tension

Coding requires poise, nerves of steel, and a bit of luck to get it off the ground. Do it once and you’re hooked. It’s like a drug that satisfies but never completely satiates.

As you build more and more complexity into your system, the balance begins to wear and the tension begins to grow. Of course, all of this is to produce an excellent product that the end-user will enjoy, so you continue to muddle through the code to completion!

And like any good blogger, your content needs to strike the right balance and tension as it presents the information to the reader. Go out too light, and the reader finds it boring and not deep enough. They might even find you a tad bit boring as well.

Create too much irresolvable tension, and you won’t capture anyone long-term.

In literary terms, this is called the narrative, the overarching movement of the story, a beginning, middle, and end.

Code does that aplenty, and if you spent a little time walking through some code, then you’d come away with a fresh perspective that few bloggers have: an appreciation for the art and science of software narrative.

In time, this develops into even more mature thinking as you build out your blog posts. For example, you might even start thinking about blog series and putting more than one or two blog posts together. You might even string them out for over 50 posts at some point!

Just Ship It!

At the end of the day, the most important thing that any software developer needs to do is ship the darn thing. That is, they need to finalize the last semi-colon, make sure it works, and then give it to the public for use.

The never-ending battle within the soul of the developer is that he knows that his work is not completely finished nor is it absolutely the best thing since sliced bread — but they ship and launch anyways.

And bloggers can learn a thing or two here: I encounter tons of people that have the potential to become amazing bloggers if only they’d ship more. In other words, they need to let go of the fear of making a mistake and the pointless drive to perfection, and just simply publish their posts, even if they’re imperfect.

Many writers simply feel like they can’t publish anything that isn’t completely perfect. This is insanity in a box. A post will never be perfect.

On the other hand, a developer knows that the moment she ships it, she’s already fixing it.

You will become a better blogger if you learn to publish despite the voices in your head telling you that it’s not perfect, that it’s not quite there yet, and that it’s not your opus.

Then, you’ll find the next time to be easier, and then the next even easier, and heck, you might even wake up one day as a professional blogger.

Related Content

• How to Write an Amazing Article
• Components of High-Quality Blog Posts
• Creating a User Interface That Speaks Your Users’ Language
• Related categories: Web Development and Project Management

About the Author

John Saddington is a software developer at 8BIT and a professional blogger who loves sharing his blogging tips, tricks, tools, and practical teaching covering SEO, WordPress and making money through your blog. You can follow him on Twitter @TentBlogger.

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Advertise here

I’m incredibly excited to let you know about the latest addition to the ever-expanding Tuts+ network — Wptuts+! Focusing on everything WordPress, the site will be bringing you top-notch tutorials on developing WordPress themes, plugins and widgets, scaling your site, the business of selling WordPress themes, and general advice on how to become an expert at using the platform!

Whether you’ve always wanted to learn more about WordPress (but never known where to start), or are a seasoned expert looking for advanced tips and tricks, Wptuts+ has you covered. Read on to find out more, meet our expert editor, and hear about how to win $1,000+ of WordPress goodies!

WordPress Tutorials, Tips and Advice

Wptuts+ will provide the amazing quality of tutorials you’ve come to expect from Tuts+, focused toward teaching you everything you need to become a WordPress expert. We have some fantastic content in the works, and you can subscribe in the following ways to ensure you don’t miss out!

• Subscribe to the RSS Feed
• Follow @envatowp on Twitter
• Like Wptuts+ on Facebook

After working as the editor of Webdesigntuts+ for the past few months, your editor — Brandon Jones — will be moving over to share his incredible wealth of WordPress knowledge on Wptuts+!

Brandon Jones is currently the third highest-selling author on ThemeForest, Envato’s marketplace for buying and selling website themes. He couldn’t be more qualified to head up Wptuts+, and I hope you’re looking forward to receiving tips from one of the most successful WordPress developers we’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

$1,200 of Prizes and Goodies Up For Grabs!

To celebrate the launch of our latest Tuts+ site, we’ve organised a fantastic giveaway with some brilliant prizes for anyone who loves WordPress! With a total value of over $1,200, it’s a fantastic collection of resources and subscriptions. Check out the full details, and take part in the contest!

Finally, if you have any feedback or ideas for Wptuts+, we’d love to hear them. Head over to the site and let us know what you’d like to see!

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Advertise here with BSA

Web Design Fan is the giving away 10 completely free memberships to their new Fan Club! Each membership lasts for an entire year ($72 value).

Joining the Web Design Fan Club grants you access to all the incredible resources and knowledge you need to become an expert web designer. From WordPress themes to premium icon sets and vectors, advanced tutorials to educational resources and files, the Web Design Fan Club delivers. Not only that, but you gain access to interviews with some of the best web designers and developers working today.

What do I get?

Oh, where to start. First of all, you get access to some incredible tutorials – written and in video. We cover basic HTML and CSS techniques, advanced Javascript and PHP solutions, and detailed lessons in using programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. We also have a ton of cool resources to make you a better designer or developer. They include:

1. Free “Premium” WordPress themes
2. Premium plugins to improve your site’s appearance and functionality.
3. Beautiful graphics (vectors, icons, brushes, and more) to add some flair to your designs.
4. Access to download all PSDs and other files that accompany our dozens of high quality tutorials.
5. Free entry into our contests we hold every month for great prizes, like software licenses and awesome hardware.
6. For more examples, click this link to access a list of everything!

How can I use this stuff?

Any way you would like. As a member of the Web Design Fan Club, you can use any of our resources we provide for all of your projects, business or personal.

So how do I win?

Simply follow @webdesignfan on Twitter and comment on this post with your Twitter account username. Winners will be announced at the end of this week (Friday 1st of July). Best of luck!

Advertise here with BSA

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About the Giveaway

In this giveaway, the good folks over at Shape5 gave us 5 1 year subscriptions to their Premium WordPress theme club to give out to some lucky MyInkBlog readers.

We had a tremendous response and got a record number of people who entered. It was incredibly difficult to pick only 5 winners, but it had to be done. Now it’s now time to announce the 5 lucky winners.

And the Winners Are…

Here are the 5 lucky winners for this giveaway:

1. Steve Webster
2. Mohsen Ghiasi
3. Phil Stringfellow
4. Payton
5. Stephen Frasier

Thank you to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners!

Check your email soon for the prizes!

Go to Source

About the Giveaway

In this giveaway, the good folks over at Shape5 gave us 5 1 year subscriptions to their Premium WordPress theme club to give out to some lucky MyInkBlog readers.

We had a tremendous response and got a record number of people who entered. It was incredibly difficult to pick only 5 winners, but it had to be done. Now it’s now time to announce the 5 lucky winners.

And the Winners Are…

Here are the 5 lucky winners for this giveaway:

1. Steve Webster
2. Mohsen Ghiasi
3. Phil Stringfellow
4. Payton
5. Stephen Frasier

Thank you to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners!

Check your email soon for the prizes!

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About the Giveaway

In this giveaway, the awesome folks over at Graph Paper Press gave us 5 coupon codes worth $99 each for 1 year subscriptions to their WordPress themes to give out to some lucky MyInkBlog readers.

We had a tremendous response and got a lot of great entries. It’s now time to announce those lucky winners.

And the Winners Are…

Here are the 5 lucky winners for this giveaway:

1. MikeNGarrett @MikeNGarrett
2. Jared Hardwick @one_passion
3. Jamie Gilbert @MrJamieGilbert
4. Sonia M @kim_m007
5. Ali @CatsWhoDesign

Thank you to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners!

Check your email soon for the coupon codes.

Stay tuned for more great giveaways here at MyInkBlog.

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Let’s go though on what these lucky winners will receive from our contest last week. All five randomly chosen winners will be given a developer license for RocketTheme WordPress themes, which you can use it to grant access to all RocketTheme’s WordPress themes, and enjoy lots of their cool benefits like theme installation on unlimited number of sites.

So who are those lucky winners? The list below tells you everything:

Winners

• Andri Kurniawan
• Jo Miller
• Anand
• Mithun John Jacob
• Irfan

Congratulations to the winners! You will be contacted shortly. Also thanks for participating the contest guys, we will see you in next contest!

(ref)

More Giveaways Coming Up!

More giveaway contests are coming right up. Here are several ways to keep yourself updated with Hongkiat.com. Stay tuned!

1. Facebook
2. Subscribe Newsletter
3. Twitter
4. RSS Feed

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The WordPress eco-system has changed so much in the past few years that keeping up with all of it has become a challenge! It’s been so encouraging not only to see WordPress themes and plug-ins increase in quality and use, but to see the overall appeal and acceptance in the worldwide marketplace grow as well.

For example, you know that an application is gaining a lot of steam when some of the largest organizations in the world (including many Fortune 50 businesses) are starting to use it for both their internal and external properties.

Naturally, as the quality of products surrounding WordPress grows in stature, so will the organizations and individuals that create and profit from them. With this increased demand comes a much greater focus on how to create a sustainable business involving WordPress. One area in particular is customer service.

A significant reason for this increase of focus on customer support in many theme shops is the GPL. More and more WordPress theme shop owners are honoring the spirit and letter of the open-source license and are finding that their biggest value proposition is based not solely on the product, but rather on the services surrounding the sale—customer support being one of them.

This makes sense, because anyone could take any old theme and profit from it once; but to do it again (and again) requires something a bit more than shipping capability. A trustworthy brand backed by a dedicated team of customer service and support is usually much more attractive to the end user than a copy of a premium theme obtained from a random torrent website. It’s also much safer, too.

But is it viable? Is it profitable? Here’s the challenge in a nutshell:

Can a model that focuses on customer support and service produce the returns necessary to keep the business profitable (if not afloat)?

Why would one care to answer such a question? First, the results could help feed the momentum necessary for current and future entrepreneurs who are interested in building a successful business around WordPress.

Secondly, I know the challenges of growing a WordPress theme shop, and I wanted to make sure that having a robust service and support system for the business was both wise and financially sound. In other words, if I was going to “make it” in this business, I wanted to make sure that it would be a smart move to model my efforts after the major players that seem to be doing it right.

What did I find? The answer appears to be a resounding “Yes,” and this article shares some of the research I came up with on the strategies, methods and implementations of top theme shops, and it looks briefly at the premium plug-in marketplace.

Let’s start by looking at some of the top WordPress theme shops to see whether service and support are not only part of their business model but integral to their brands.

A Look At The Top WordPress Businesses And Their Service and Support Models

At one point, identifying the top players in the WordPress theme marketplace was fairly easy, even for casual customers. This is no longer the case; drawing them out requires a bit of historical knowledge.

Although this list might come under heavy fire from nearly every angle, the goal is not to be comprehensive, but rather to be historically fair, providing as accurate a depiction as possible of the current WordPress theme marketplace with regards to service and support.

Generally speaking, the four theme shops below are well respected in the industry and have long been recognized as leaders in the space.

1. WooThemes

WooThemes is arguably the best known WordPress theme shop out there, and it even has even adapted its model to other platforms, such as ExpressionEngine, Drupal and the e-commerce platform Magento. However, it recently returned to its roots to concentrate on WordPress exclusively.

At the time of writing, WooThemes had nearly 90 WordPress-related themes, and more in the pipeline. But what of its service model?

It has some key areas of support:

• Documentation,
• FAQ,
• Support forum,
• Tutorials.

The area with the most client interaction is the support forum, which is closed to the general public but viewable by paying customers. The forum is a lightly customized version of the popular bbPress forum software, also made by the creators of WordPress (Automattic):

WooThemes’ support is widely regarded as superb. Full-time staff manage the boards daily, and some core developers who build the products even engage with customers.

Needless to say, customer support is part of the WooTheme way. Many newer theme shops have copied its approach to support.

But how well has it fared with this model so far? Over $2 million in sales a year, according to Adii Pienaar, one of the founders of WooThemes. Could its support system be said to be the biggest contributing factor? Perhaps. But service and support were obviously in Adii’s blood to begin with; for example, he makes a point of answering every single email in his inbox. Now that’s customer support.

I spend a lot of time on email, and I do respond to every single email that I get. … I just commit the time. First thing in the morning and last thing before I go home for the day is spent doing emails, spent connecting with people.

– Adii Pienaar

It shows. His business, beyond the great themes, is support and service. It is one of the hallmarks of his business and brand, and I applaud him for it.

2. Thesis Theme

Thesis Theme is also one of the best-known players in the space, for the right reasons and (at times) the wrong ones. Witness, for example, the very public dispute over GPL licensing between Chris Pearson (the founder of Thesis) and Matt Mullenweg (the founder of WordPress).

Whatever your opinion, Thesis deserves its due as one of the most consistently prominent premium theme shops out there.

So, how does its service and support compare? “Mysterious” is one way to put it. At first pass, finding any explicit mention of support is hard. Searching for the keyword “forums” returns only four results, two of which are testimonials and two of which explain how These, like WooThemes, is members only:

And if you need a helping hand along the way, you’ll be able to cash in on the most valuable part of your Thesis purchase: our expert support staff and members-only forums!

As with WooThemes, the forum isn’t publicly accessible from the home page. You have to log in to see it:

The forum is a lightly modified version of vBulletin, a paid self-hosted forum solution. And Thesis uses aMember, a PHP script, for its support and authentication system:

What’s interesting as you dig into this “service” model is that it’s unclear what exactly is supported by actual staff members (a “Shelley” is mentioned on the home page) and what is provided by regular paid users:

As you can see, the top three posters are miles ahead of any other users, and there is no “Shelley” to be seen (although there is a user named Shelley who has four posts to date). It’s quite apparent that this is really a community-led support system, with little to no guidance or support staff to be seen. Quality assurance of solutions is hit and miss, and moderation is hard to find. Lastly, finding Chris Pearson in the forum is hard as well, and he’s the one behind it all.

Does this mean that support and service are lacking? Not necessarily, because the community (and power users in particular) seem to be picking up the slack, and the democratic and open nature of the system seems to be working.

Note that, unlike WooThemes, there is no obvious user guide or FAQ. You have to either log into the system (whereupon you would see it in the header) or jump over to the blog to find it in a drop-down menu:

What does this mean for end users or potential customers? Perhaps that the core product is the focus of this business, and not customer support.

Has it hurt the bottom line? From Chris’ mouth, not really. He’s been known to share his numbers, openly citing over $400,000 in affiliate sales, for at least a total gross of $1.2 million. And he added that it is “obvious” he has made more than that.

One could say that despite the lack of support as a core part of Thesis’ model (compared to WooThemes), it has still been successful. But remember that Thesis was in many ways the first to market, and the forum system was a part of this move. Chris provided a support system, and the community rallied around it, taking up the banner, thus creating an internal culture of usefulness.

3. StudioPress

StudioPress has been around for a while, although the name wasn’t always the same. Brian Gardner, the founder of the business, first called his theme line “Revolution.” It was eventually rebranded in February 2009.

Today it is known as one of the top theme shops out there, providing over 30 WordPress themes and a number of WordPress plug-ins to boot. But that’s certainly not all: StudioPress has partnered with some of the bigger names in the industry and is a part of CopyBlogger Media, which offers much more than WordPress themes.

But has all of this extra business weakened its support and service model? Hardly. Like Thesis, StudioPress uses a lightly customized installation of vBulletin for its support systems. It offers an in-depth developer-friendly overview (with tutorials, how-to’s and more). And it has a general FAQ.

Saying that service and support is integral to its business would not be overstating it in the least.

If you dig in further, you will see that it has more than 25 legitimate moderators and super-users who help control, manage and support the community at large:

Needless to say, support and service is a significant part of its online model and figures largely in its business and brand. This comes as no surprise; Brian had the idea for the forum right out of the gate. After racking up a whopping $10,000 worth of sales in the first month, he knew that his growing business needed some sort of forum software:

And it got so big so quick, I realized this is more than just a few bucks. I need to build something around this. That’s when I started looking into forum software, because I knew that I’d have to provide support. So I set up this support forum. I have no business background, or a degree in business, this was all fly-by-the-seat-of-my-shorts at that point, and so I just did what felt right.

And it has proven to be right. With the forum software in place and a solid product offering, StudioPress continues to grow.

Where does it stand now? In the same interview, Brian mentions that it has at least 35,000 paying customers. The most conservative estimate would put the company’s revenue at an excess of $2 million. But the real figure is probably much further north.

StudioPress is headed in the right direction, and it will almost certainly continue to grow, because its model is not only effective but competitive and sharp.

4. ThemeForest

There’s no escaping this behemoth. Most developers and designers are already aware of ThemeForest’s growing number of WordPress themes at cut-rate prices. It offers products not only for WordPress but for Magento, Joomla, ExpressionEngine and Drupal, as well as a slew of options for e-commerce-related apps.

As of the time of writing, this marketplace had 923 WordPress themes, and growing daily. Compared to other theme shops, this number is simply staggering. It makes sense, though, when you see the difference in its model and strategy: premium themes from many contributors instead of a single source.

How does this affect support and service for the themes themselves? In a word, it’s “different.” Envato, the parent company of ThemeForest, has a service agreement, but it’s limited and pretty much passes on the responsibility to customers and their relationship with vendors. There is a support forum, but it’s general in nature and definitely not a place to find support for a particular theme:

What can you expect from the vendors? Mixed results at best. For starters, see what some of the top sellers offer:

The number-one selling WordPress theme has sold over 5,000 copies. At $35 a pop, that’s a total gross of $175,000. ThemeForest has a sliding scale for payment, and at this tier, the author would pocket 70% of the earnings, for a net take of $122,000. Not bad, right? That’s assuming the theme sold exclusively through ThemeForest.

But the question remains, does this top seller provide support? A quick look at the theme reveals that it does, with a link to a forum separate from ThemeForest:

As you can see, it uses its own forum software, running on its own server:

But support is not required of all theme authors. A quick scan of the lower-selling themes reveals that the vast majority do not self-host any support systems outside of ThemeForest. And what support there is mostly happens in the comment layer of the theme itself:

What does this mean for service and support for WordPress themes on ThemeForest? It means Caveat emptor (“buyer beware”)!

Responsibility ultimately rests with the buyer, who should check whether the author has a history of providing robust support or whether there is off-site support that addresses their needs.

Only the best-selling themes seem to provide the level of support offered by other premium theme shops (such as WooThemes, Genesis and Thesis). Perhaps this makes good business sense, because the time, energy and capital required to create a self-hosted off-site system would be warranted if sales are strong to begin with.

Does this happen all the time? Not necessarily, and this puts Envato and its ThemeForest system in a different field with regard to service and support. How has this affected business for Envato and its respective contributors? Quite positively, in fact, especially for the strong sellers. The others have varied results, and a quick Google search shows that there’s much debate on whether being a seller on Envato is worthwhile in the long run, when you could just as easily set up shop and sell to customers directly.

But that’s a discussion for another blog post.

Typical Support Models

From looking at these four services (and a vast sampling of many other commercial WordPress theme shops), one could conclude the following:

1. Premium theme shops typically have a support system;
2. FAQs are common;
3. Documentation is generally offered;
4. Support forums are also prevalent.

Does this mean that a theme shop without these elements is guaranteed to fail? Certainly not, because many commercial theme shops do not offer the full range of support seen with the four above.

But you would be wise to heed their success and either spin your own contextual business model or simply adopt the one that works. “Don’t fix what ain’t broke,” right?

To say that these four WordPress theme shops are representative of the eco-system of commercial WordPress themes would be a stretch. The support models are as diverse as the themes themselves. Generally speaking, though, the ones seen above are found throughout the WordPress business culture.

Finally, note the lack of the support element that’s a fixture of brick-and-mortar stores: phone support. This makes sense because these are Web-based businesses, and most engagement is done online. Still, there may be room for innovation for theme shops that want to distinguish themselves (and make a market play) by offering something different like this.

What About Premium WordPress Plug-In Shops?

As a good researcher and business strategist, you should consider alternative business models that are similar in scope and product. The growing eco-system of premium WordPress plug-in shops is one such area. They may not have the depth or breadth of market coverage, but they are without question growing rapidly. Many believe that they’ll become a serious area of WordPress business soon enough.

Here are some of the better-known plug-in shops for your consideration.

1. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms offers an advanced form builder that does some fairly incredible stuff. With deep integration with enterprise-grade Web services like FreshBooks, MailChimp, PayPal, Campaign Monitor and more, one could use it as more than a simple contact form.

Getting started will cost you at least $39, and the price goes up to $199. This plug-in at the high end costs more than nearly every WordPress theme in existence (even the most expensive ones). So, what do you get at this level? For starters, you get access to a support forum:

This, as well as a general FAQ and documentation, is available to all license holders. If you have the highest support license (“Developer”), then you get access to what’s called “Priority support,” which gives you the following:

• Automatic upgrades,
• Documentation,
• Online support,
• Priority support,
• Add-ons.

These value-adds could hold appeal, especially for teams or individuals that have shelled out nearly $200 for the product. Generally, Gravity Forms has support mechanisms that are similar to many of the premium WordPress theme shops out there.

2. GetShopped

Another commercial plug-in is GetShopped, which is a free download to start, but then you can purchase some advanced features and add-ons, ranging from $10 to $195. It’s one of the best-known e-commerce plug-in solutions out there, and some of the customizations that people have created with it are truly world class.

The following support mechanisms are in place for customers:

• Support forums,
• Videos,
• FAQs,
• Documentation,
• Premium support via a token system.

The support is similar to that of Gravity Forms as well as many other WordPress theme shops.

3. Code Canyon, via Envato and WPPlugins

Code Canyon’s premium WordPress plug-in directory has the exact same support system as ThemeForest. In other words, the customer could be purchasing a plug-in that comes with very little support or that comes with a robust system provided directly by the author.

This particular website is growing fast, with more and more authors using this platform to sell their creations, so the buyer should research carefully before making a purchase.

An alternative to Code Canyon is WPPlugins, which has a similar directory:

The website itself does not guarantee support and instead lays responsibility directly on the authors. Instructions for installation are sometimes provided, but some cover little more than the simple process of installing the plug-in. In other words, support runs the gamut from great to non-existent.

4. VaultPress

VaultPress is a project developed by WordPress and Automattic directly, and I think it’s one of the best WordPress plug-ins out there, especially among back-up systems for WordPress (there are a number of free alternatives). The system is similar to the enterprise-grade back-up solution that runs the gigantic WordPress.com network of blogs, and it can be used by both personal bloggers and Fortune 500 companies.

VaultPress offers “Premium support” for paying customers (currently $15 to $40), as well as a “Concierge Service” to assist new customers with new installations. There is also a robust support section with FAQs, video tutorials and screencasts, plus general information for custom configurations of the plug-in. Above all else is the peace of mind you’ve purchased, knowing that 20 million+ blogs are using it with success.

5. OIO Publisher

OIO Publisher is a popular advertising management system that you can install quickly on a self-hosted WordPress blog and use off the shelf to sell advertising to partner companies and interested individuals.

Paying customers ($47) get access to forums, FAQs and documentation that cover installation and usage. The content is typical fare and might very well suit your needs. All in all, nothing is too different about this approach to support.

6. Scribe

Scribe is one of the newer players out there and is quickly gaining attention through its high-profile marketers and partners. It is described as an advanced SEO optimization plug-in that can optimize your blog posts for search engines.

You get access to its support system (“myScribe System”), which has forums, video tutorials and a troubleshooting ticketing system, as well as email support. Occasional educational resources are sent out via a newsletter as well.

The cost? Up to $97 per month. This service could end up costing you over $1,000 per year if you opt for the biggest subscription. Hopefully, the additional traffic you generate will more than make up for it.

The Bottom Line

All in all, WordPress theme and plug-in providers are working not only to attract new customers but to retain them. And not only in small quantities either. Some major theme shops attract tens of thousands of happy customers, who then refer new business every day.

For some, service and support are not only a part of business, but make up their foundational philosophy. These companies do not just tack on service and support at the end of the purchase, but rather integrate it as a core feature of the product. It’s a great model and extremely profitable, even for small shops.

If you’re serious about entering the WordPress theme market and being a serious contender, then you’ll want to seriously consider offering ongoing service and support for a kick-butt Web product. (Just make sure the product truly kicks butt.)

Finally, you may be interested in how I used this research to launch my WordPress theme, Standard Theme, and how this has affected my business’ bottom line. Here are some quick insights:

1. Offering support gave our marketing that extra oomph and factored into the service being listed by Mashable as one of the top premium themes out there.
2. The community and support system that we use, Zendesk, is a paid service, but we saw it as an investment in our community and product. It has since provided an exceptional ROI, and the community is now giving back resources, tutorials and help to other members alongside our dedicated staff. We started with vBulletin, but we weren’t satisfied with how it functioned. It was also heavy on our servers.
3. Our support system is, in fact, one of our strongest value propositions, and customers talk this up on Facebook and Twitter regularly.

The bottom line is that, although we pay four figures a year for Zendesk, we’ve made that investment back in spades in terms of community engagement and product sales. The point is this: service and support should be seriously considered by WordPress theme shops not only for business growth but to remain competitive.

Other Resources

To round out your own research, have a look at some of these resources and links, and gather as much info as you can on service and support for WordPress businesses:

• WordPress’ official commercial themes directory, to compare with other theme shops.
• Many free WordPress themes are offered by Smashing Magazine for your comparison and contrast.
• “Crafting An Irresistible Price by Focusing on Your Users”
• A look back at 2008, when premium themes were on the rise.
• For a relevant and timely read, try Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness. It is a serious resource about how one successful business made customer support its mantra and method. It obviously worked, because it sold the business for more than $1 billion! You can apply Hsieh’s lessons and experience directly to your WordPress business.

What’s Your Take?

How have you seen the WordPress premium marketplace change? Is it a good or bad thing? We’d love to hear your thoughts, and if you have any additional resources, feel free to list them for everyone’s benefit!

(al)

© John Saddington for Smashing Magazine, 2011. |
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We have another fantastic WordPress theme competition for you today – This time we have three premium WordPress themes to give away to five lucky readers (that is three themes for each of the winners). All of the themes have been designed and developed by jvanoel of ThemeForest fame.

All you have to do is leave a comment below telling us how you plan to use these themes. That is it, its as easy as that
The competition will be live for the next seven days (ending the 16th of June 2011) with the winners chosen completely at random.

All of the themes we are giving away today come with enormous flexibility allowing you to build a website the way you want it to be. The biggest features of these themes is the “content composer” which makes building custom layouts fast and easy as never before. Besides the “content composer” there are also tons of other easy to use options such as slider management for each page, optional custom widgets section for posts/pages and much, much more. Read on for some more information about each theme…

Content Composer Demo

The Themes

Brainstorm

Brainstorm has been built to push the limits of WordPress. With the powerful Content Composer and it’s modules it’s one of the easiest WordPress themes to manage your content. It includes options for a stylish blog, some amazing ways to show of your work in the portfolio pages and it’s packed with some nice shortcodes to make every page unique. There are 10 color scheme options and the PSD is included so it’s easy to create your own style if you want.
Brainstorm Demo

Someday

Someday has been designed for business and portfolio purposes. It includes the Content Composer with 8 modules with lots of options so you have the flexibility to create a page to suit your needs. If you check out the demo, you will see that the possibilities are endless. There are some great style options for the header and footer so you can make the color scheme fit your brand.
Someday Demo

Eptonic

This minimalistic theme can be used for any kind of website. It can be used for a business website, as a portfolio or a blog because it’s super easy to customize. It includes the Content Composer with 8 modules with even more options so you have total freedom of managing your content. It has some great features for your normal pages, blog and portfolio pages. Make unique sidebars per page, choose between two different sliders, use the custom widgets special made for this theme, have a stylish blog and show off your work the fancy way.
Eptonic Demo

How to Enter

To enter this competition all you have to do is leave a comment below telling how you plan to use these themes. The competition will be run for the next seven days (ending the 16th of June 2011). The winners will be chosen completely at random and will be contacted by email within 2-3 days of the competition ending.

Best of luck to everyone

Advertise here with BSA

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

We have another fantastic WordPress theme competition for you today – This time we have three premium WordPress themes to give away to five lucky readers (that is three themes for each of the winners). All of the themes have been designed and developed by jvanoel of ThemeForest fame.

All you have to do is leave a comment below telling us how you plan to use these themes. That is it, its as easy as that
The competition will be live for the next seven days (ending the 16th of June 2011) with the winners chosen completely at random.

All of the themes we are giving away today come with enormous flexibility allowing you to build a website the way you want it to be. The biggest features of these themes is the “content composer” which makes building custom layouts fast and easy as never before. Besides the “content composer” there are also tons of other easy to use options such as slider management for each page, optional custom widgets section for posts/pages and much, much more. Read on for some more information about each theme…

Content Composer Demo

The Themes

Brainstorm

Brainstorm has been built to push the limits of WordPress. With the powerful Content Composer and it’s modules it’s one of the easiest WordPress themes to manage your content. It includes options for a stylish blog, some amazing ways to show of your work in the portfolio pages and it’s packed with some nice shortcodes to make every page unique. There are 10 color scheme options and the PSD is included so it’s easy to create your own style if you want.
Brainstorm Demo

Someday

Someday has been designed for business and portfolio purposes. It includes the Content Composer with 8 modules with lots of options so you have the flexibility to create a page to suit your needs. If you check out the demo, you will see that the possibilities are endless. There are some great style options for the header and footer so you can make the color scheme fit your brand.
Someday Demo

Eptonic

This minimalistic theme can be used for any kind of website. It can be used for a business website, as a portfolio or a blog because it’s super easy to customize. It includes the Content Composer with 8 modules with even more options so you have total freedom of managing your content. It has some great features for your normal pages, blog and portfolio pages. Make unique sidebars per page, choose between two different sliders, use the custom widgets special made for this theme, have a stylish blog and show off your work the fancy way.
Eptonic Demo

How to Enter

To enter this competition all you have to do is leave a comment below telling how you plan to use these themes. The competition will be run for the next seven days (ending the 16th of June 2011). The winners will be chosen completely at random and will be contacted by email within 2-3 days of the competition ending.

Best of luck to everyone

Advertise here with BSA

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Full detail after jump!

What You’ll Be Winning

Great product comes with quality features, here are some sneak peek of RocketTheme’s WordPress themes you can access with developer license.

Hybrid
Hybrid features a rich and vibrant design with 12 header styles, 12 footer styles and 5 body colors plus accent styles available for your customization. You probably don’t have to worry about your site will look similar elsewhere in the web.

Omnicron
Omnicron is the best choice for business site especially product related site with its exceptionally slick and attractive design and RokFeature pricing table.

Zephyr
Zephyr is proud of its cool yet elegant dark design suitable for gaming site with extensive features such as MegaMenu and Color Chooser.

That’s all? No way. They got 23 more WordPress themes for you to enjoy and below are additional benefits you get with this developer license:

• Unlimited amount of entitlements
• Access to Developer Only section of RocketTheme Community Forums
• Ability to post and reply to the new forum ‘Jobs’ board
• Eligibility to be highlighted in the new ‘Spotlight’ section of the RocketTheme web site

You can check out more details in its subscription page.

Sidenote: RocketTheme even launches a Developer Spotlight Section for you to highlight your customization services to RocketTheme’s visitors and club members. Do check it out.

How To Win

I bet you knew it. All you need to do is simply put a comment on this post, that’s all. Winners will be chosen on a random basis, and the contests will end on 13th June. All the best possible winners!

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What we are Giving Away

The awesome folks over at Graph Paper Press have graciously offered to give 5 lucky MyInkBlog readers coupon codes for free annual subscriptions to access their gorgeous themes, worth $99 each. Winners will get to pick any of their stunning WordPress themes for future web design projects.

Who is Graph Paper Press?

Graph Paper Press sells minimalistic modular designs that can transform your blog from a tubular list of posts into an aesthetically-pleasing portfolio or news magazine website.

Minimalist WordPress Themes for Designers, Artists, and Hipsters

How to Enter the Giveaway

1. Follow @MyInkBlog and @GraphPaperPress on Twitter.
2. Post a tweet that mentions this giveaway with a link to this page, or simply RT this tweet.
3. Post a link to your tweet here as a comment.

Hint: How to Link to a single tweet on Twitter.

That’s it, good luck to everyone and thank you for participating!

This contest will stay open for entries until Tuesday May 17th, 2011. Winners will be announced shortly thereafter.

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We had a really great response to our ThemeFuse Giveaway that has now come to a close. Three lucky MyInkBlog readers are getting a voucher good for a ThemeFuse WordPress theme of their choice, each worth $49.

The winners are:

Here are the 3 lucky winners of this giveaway:

1. Adam Majchrzak @warstwydotcom
2. DirTek @DirTek
3. Good Web Design @goodwebdesign

Congratulations to the winners! Check your email soon for your free theme vouchers.

I’m sorry we couldn’t give free themes to everyone who entered. but for those who didn’t win ThemeFuse has a great special running right now. You can get $10 off any theme just for hitting the “Like” button on their Facebook page:

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Since many people are using WordPress because of its ease of use and extensibility but sometime one or more WordPress websites look similar. This is the point where WordPress themes come in. Selecting a distinctive WordPress theme sets your website apart from others.

Recently WordPress has released WordPress 3 Series with loads of added features. So, next time when you update your WordPress theme, choose a WordPress 3.0 compatible theme. Here in this post we have gathered 50 outstanding WordPress 3 series compatible themes. All these themes are available for Free downloading.

Woody Magazine

( Demo | Download )

Swiss Theme

( Demo | Download )

New Event

( Demo | Download )

Computis Magazine

( Demo | Download )

Yellow Magazine

( Demo | Download )

Blog-O-Folio WordPress Theme

( Demo | Download )

Studio Theme

( Demo | Download )

Kalixo Magazine

( Demo | Download )

Grading Theme

( Demo | Download )

Vertical

( Demo | Download )

Bluecorp

( Demo | Download )

Money wp theme

( Demo | Download )

The Scoop

( Demo | Download )

Ashen wordpress theme

( Demo | Download )

Iris WordPress Theme

( Demo | Download )

Standstone wordpress theme

( Demo | Download )

ShopCart – Beauty Store

( Demo | Download )

Xenon Theme

( Demo | Download )

MusicShow

( Demo | Download )

FASHIONDESIGN

( Demo | Download )

My Recipe

( Demo | Download )

IMPRESSIVE

( Demo | Download )

Strategies Theme

( Demo | Download )

Night Spectrum

( Demo | Download )

BUSINESSFIRM

( Demo | Download )

Pretty Face Theme

( Demo | Download )

Palladiumize

( Demo | Download )

NATURA

( Demo | Download )

OnTheWay

( Demo | Download )

Silverine

( Demo | Download )

NEWSPOINT

( Demo | Download )

LODGE

( Demo | Download )

Effective Theme

( Demo | Download )

KARMELA

( Demo | Download )

Strontiumpon

( Demo | Download )

Zirconiumoid

( Demo | Download )

Refresh Theme

( Demo | Download )

Design Theme

( Demo | Download )

AutoFocus

( Demo | Download )

Revolt theme

( Demo | Download )

Minimal Theme

( Demo | Download )

Style Theme

( Demo | Download )

Spectacular

( Demo | Download )

Diary/Notebook

( Demo | Download )

Blogum

( Demo | Download )

Big Square

( Demo | Download )

Itheme2

( Demo | Download )

Cenutis Magazine

( Demo | Download )

Latest Tribuune

( Demo | Download )

Numerto Magazine

( Demo | Download )

Gamelison Magazine

( Demo | Download )

Brought To You By

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This free icon set by Iconshock, released exclusively here at Six Revisions, features beautiful, pixel perfect, glossy 3D icons. Each icon comes in 5 sizes (PNG format), with Photoshop PSD files in case you would like to tweak the icons.

Preview

Terms of Use

All icons are free and you can download and use them for your individual or commercial projects. You should not upload the source files on your server and redistribute them as your own, either in part or in whole. If you want to share the icons, you can link back to this web page:

http://sixrevisions.com/freebies/icons/3d-glossy-icon-set-20-free-icons-with-psd/

Download

• 3d_glossy_icon_set (ZIP, 1.83 MB)

Related Content

• Free Icon Pack: Vector 3D Social Icons
• SocialMate: 28 Free Social Media Icons (Includes PSDs)
• Free Icons (with PSDs): 30 E-Commerce Icons
• Related categories: Freebies and Web Design

About the Author

Iconshock is the largest icon design company with more than 10,000 icons in 260 icon sets. Feel free to check their icon library and their newest website, WordPressThemeShock, which has tons of freebies for designers and premium WordPress themes.

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WPZOOM and Six Revisions partnered up to give away 10 of their top-quality premium WordPress themes in a recent giveaway. Plenty of Six Revisions readers participated, and in this post, we announce the 10 winners.

The Winners

The winners of WPZOOM Premium WordPress themes are:

• Richard Schumacher
• Digital Bard
• Justin Givens
• Alex
• hache.silva
• Mudrosti
• Ana
• Caroline
• Simon Farine
• Abdul Vayani

Congratulations to all the winners! You should all have received an email containing information regarding your prize.

Results of the SQL query that selected 10 comments randomly.

About WPZOOM

WPZOOM provides top quality premium WordPress themes at amazing prices. Lifetime support is included in the themes you purchase from them. All their themes are painstakingly handcrafted by a team of professional designers and developers.

Check out all the WordPress themes at WPZOOM, along with live demos. You can also see WPZOOM themes in action by visiting their showcase.

Follow them on Twitter and join them on Facebook.

Related Content

• A Guide to Premium WordPress Themes
• Top 5 Excellent E-Commerce Plugins for WordPress
• Enhancing WordPress Custom Fields with Search Filtering
• Related categories: WordPress and Web Design

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Advertise here with BSA

WPZOOM and Six Revisions partnered up to give away 10 of their top-quality premium WordPress themes in a recent giveaway. Plenty of Six Revisions readers participated, and in this post, we announce the 10 winners.

The Winners

The winners of WPZOOM Premium WordPress themes are:

• Richard Schumacher
• Digital Bard
• Justin Givens
• Alex
• hache.silva
• Mudrosti
• Ana
• Caroline
• Simon Farine
• Abdul Vayani

Congratulations to all the winners! You should all have received an email containing information regarding your prize.

Results of the SQL query that selected 10 comments randomly.

About WPZOOM

WPZOOM provides top quality premium WordPress themes at amazing prices. Lifetime support is included in the themes you purchase from them. All their themes are painstakingly handcrafted by a team of professional designers and developers.

Check out all the WordPress themes at WPZOOM, along with live demos. You can also see WPZOOM themes in action by visiting their showcase.

Follow them on Twitter and join them on Facebook.

Related Content

• A Guide to Premium WordPress Themes
• Top 5 Excellent E-Commerce Plugins for WordPress
• Enhancing WordPress Custom Fields with Search Filtering
• Related categories: WordPress and Web Design

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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We recently held a giveaway for 2 years free web hosting on Zyma. 20 Six Revisions readers who participated were randomly selected to win this awesome prize, and in this post, you’ll see the list of winners.

The Winners

The winners of Zyma web hosting for 2 years are:

• lazaac
• David Rydgren
• Joel Emberson
• Rilwis
• Dave
• Michael
• Amie
• alberto
• Technotiger
• Jason
• spencer
• Bobby
• Hitesh K
• Karla
• doer
• Hamrath
• Jay Chopra
• Fred
• Ahmad
• Ina

On behalf of the Six Revisions community, I’d like to congratulate our 20 winners! The winners should already have received an email with information about their prize.

Results of the SQL query that selected 20 comments randomly.

About Zyma Web Hosting

Zyma.com launched in 2010 and is rapidly gaining high regard for their excellent service and value. They are currently one of the fastest growing hosting companies in the UK, and are constantly praised for their high level of customer support and satisfaction. Their industry-leading web hosting package offers the most attractive and comprehensive features for one the best prices on the internet.

Based in Basingstoke, UK, they currently have customers in over seven different countries covering four different continents.

Related Content

• How to Host the Perfect Design Conference
• 10 Basic Tips for Improving WordPress Themes
• The Only 5 Google Chrome Extensions You Need
• Related categories: Web Design and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Some of the categories are still in their infancy and our Devs are working hard on improving the overall UI of Creattica to make things even easier to navigate.

Please feel free to submit any of your own work to our new free categories!

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Our friends over at ThemeFuse wanted to share 3 awesome WP theme licenses with our readers, so if you are using WordPress and looking for a new theme for your website or blog, you will want to check this out. The lucky winners of today’s giveaway will be given access to download any original WordPress theme of their choice from Themefuse free of charge.

ThemeFuse is the new rising star in the commercial WordPress theme developing industry and their theme selection is pretty amazing. We are giving away 3 vouchers, each worth $49. Continue reading to learn how you can win one.

Here are a few examples of themes designed and developed by ThemeFuse. You can visit their site for a complete list. Click on the images below to view details and check the demo sites:

ThemeFuse – Life&Style

ThemeFuse – Welcome Inn

ThemeFuse – Envision

How to Enter the Giveaway

1. Follow @MyInkBlog and @ThemeFuse on Twitter.
2. Post a tweet that mentions this giveaway with a link to this page, or simply RT this tweet.
3. Post a link to your tweet here as a comment.

This contest will stay open for entries until Wednesday May 3rd, 2011. Winners will be announced shortly thereafter.

That’s it, good luck to everyone and thank you for participating!

For anyone who is looking to buy from ThemeFuse right now, check out their special $10 off you get just by hitting the “Like” button on their Facebook page:

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Its been a while, but today we have another exclusive free icon-set for you. Yet again, our friends from Iconshock.com have exclusively designed this set for Speckyboy readers.
The set is called the ‘Multimedia Icon Set’ and, as the name suggests, contains 14 multimedia icons in PNG format. You will also find included in the download the AI source files.

Multimedia Icon Set Preview:

Download the Icons

Within the Multimedia Icon Sets ZIP package you will find the 14 PNG icons sized at 256x256px, you will also find the original AI source files for each icon.
You are free to use this icon set for both personal and commercial projects. Enjoy
Download the Multimedia Icon Set (ZIP)

You might also like our previous exclusive icon-sets

Exclusive Free Toolbar Icon-Set for our Readers →
Exclusive Payment Method Icon Set for our Readers →
Free Grass Textured Social Bookmarking Icon Set →
Free Icon Set for Designers – The Go Green! Icon Set (108 Icons) →
Free WordPress Folder Iconset for our Readers →
Five Free Social Bookmarking Icons for our Readers →
Freestyle and Square, Two Free Social Media Icon Sets →

Thanks to Iconshock

Iconshock is the largest stock icon company with more than 1,000.000 icons within 150 icon sets… Feel free to check its impressive stock and don’t miss its recently launched website: WordPressThemeShock which features tons freebies for designers and premium WordPress themes.

Advertise here with BSA

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Because of the popularity of the previous Zyma web hosting giveaway, we’ve partnered up again with our friends at Zyma to give out another 20 web hosting accounts for 2 full years. Read on to see how you can win this terrific prize.

About Zyma Web Hosting

Zyma.com launched in 2010 and is rapidly gaining high regard for their excellent service and value. They are currently one of the fastest growing hosting companies in the UK, and are constantly praised for their high level of customer support and satisfaction. Their industry-leading web hosting package offers the most attractive and comprehensive features for one the best prices on the internet.

Based in Basingstoke, UK, they currently have customers in over seven different countries covering four different continents.

How to Win a Web Hosting Plan at Zyma

For a chance to win a web hosting plan at Zyma, simply leave a comment answering the following question:

• How would you use your web hosting plan at Zyma?

Giveaway Details

This giveaway ends on Monday, May 9, 2011 after which the comments section on this post will be closed and you will no longer be able to leave a comment. Please leave a valid email address when filling out the comment form so that we can contact you if you’ve won. Please only comment once. The 20 winners will be randomly selected using the same method as previous Six Revisions giveaways. The winners will be announced on a separate post and you’re advised to subscribe to our RSS feed so that you can be quickly notified when the announcement post has been published. Please note that comments are moderated and so your comment may not show up right away. Please also note that comments that do not follow the instructions on how to participate (mentioned above) may not be published, or may be removed later on.

Related Content

• How to Host the Perfect Design Conference
• 10 Basic Tips for Improving WordPress Themes
• The Only 5 Google Chrome Extensions You Need
• Related categories: Web Design and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Advertise here with BSA

In this giveaway, WPZOOM, providers of top quality Premium WordPress themes at amazing prices, is shelling out premium WordPress themes (worth $69) and giving it to 10 lucky Six Revisions readers. Continue reading to find out how you can win a WPZOOM premium theme.

WPZOOM: Top-Quality Professional WordPress Themes

WPZOOM provides top quality premium WordPress themes at amazing prices. Lifetime support is included in the themes you purchase from them. All their themes are painstakingly handcrafted by a team of professional designers and developers.

With the advanced WPZOOM Options Panel, users can easily customize every detail of their themes to best suit their needs.

The price for their themes varies depending on which package seems most appropriate to your needs. For the Standard Theme pricing ($69), you can purchase an individual package (which actually will include 2 themes), while a Standard Membership subscription ($199) gives you access to all their themes.

More plans and information can be found on the WPZOOM Pricing page.

WPZOOM Themes and Examples

Check out all the WordPress themes at WPZOOM, along with live demos. You can also see WPZOOM themes in action by visiting their showcase.

Here are some of their latest premium WordPress themes.

SportPress

Photoria

Telegraph

Graphix

How to Win a WPZOOM Premium WordPress Theme

To win, simply answer the following question in the comments:

• Which WPZOOM theme would you like to win?

You can view WPZOOM’s collection of themes to see which one you’d like to win.

Giveaway Details

This giveaway ends on Wednesday, May 4, 2011 after which the comments section on this post will be closed and you will no longer be able to leave a comment. Please leave a valid email address when filling out the comment form so that we can contact you if you’ve won. Please only comment once. The 10 winners will be randomly selected using the same method as previous Six Revisions giveaways. The winners will be announced on a separate post and you’re advised to subscribe to our RSS feed so that you can be quickly notified when the winners announcement post has been published. Please note that comments are moderated and so your comment may not show up right away. Please also note that comments that do not follow the instructions on how to participate (described above) may not be published, or may be removed later on.

Related Content

• A Guide to Premium WordPress Themes
• Top 5 Excellent E-Commerce Plugins for WordPress
• Enhancing WordPress Custom Fields with Search Filtering
• Related categories: WordPress and Web Design

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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• Bjorn Seigers
• Cean
• Conors
• Christopher
• Dorothy
• Josh
• Roy S.
• Juli
• Denise
• Karthick

ThemeFuse was born from the passion for the things done right in every way. Starting from the original design concepts filled with details in every pixels, continuing with the clean code of the wordpress themes, and finishing with the best AfterCare Support there is.

Their aim is to shake up the premium wp industry, and show that wp themes companies don’t have to just keep making the same themes over and over again to be successful. According to their believes that the users want to try new themes, original themes, so it’s time to step up and bring some originality into the mix.

Congratulations to all the winners from SmashingApps.Com. All of the winners will be contacted soon. If you are not winner at this time so please be patient and keep visiting here or subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well because we are coming up with another new great contest very soon.

Thanks to ThemeFuse for sponsoring this wonderful contest at Smashing Apps.

If you want to conduct any contest at Smashing Apps just contact us and send us all the details.

Brought To You By

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WordPress professionals are faced with many options when deciding which membership-based theme providers are worth their investment. It is important to know how frequent future releases are, what your actual cost will be over time and what kind of support you can expect. It is also important to know what types of themes you will be gaining access to. What I will provide in this article is information to help you compare the details of popular WordPress theme clubs, so that you can more easily determine which might be useful in your situation.

About WordPress Theme Clubs

There are dozens of companies that provide commercial WordPress themes on a membership basis. Let’s first discuss what it means to be a member of a theme club, who theme clubs are ideally suited for and what you generally get as a member of a theme club.

What are WordPress Theme Clubs?

Essentially, a theme club offers membership that you can purchase to gain access to a collection of professional-quality WordPress themes with support resources. Some providers call this arrangement a “club” while others simply call it a membership. Typically, a membership must be renewed either monthly or annually in order to maintain access to theme updates, new releases and support. Customers can continue to use themes already downloaded even after membership has ended.

There is also another type of “membership”. Some companies who sell themes individually also offer “all themes” packages that include future releases, updates and lifetime support. Basically, what they are offering is a lifetime membership with no recurring fees. For the purpose of this article, I will consider these providers as theme clubs, although they do not see themselves in this way and may not be as compelled to provide new releases at the same frequency as traditional clubs.

Who are Theme Clubs For?

Theme clubs are beneficial to those who produce many WordPress-powered websites. The idea is that you gain access to a useful, growing collection of themes for less than you would pay if you bought the themes individually. Freelance designers and developers are often members of WordPress theme clubs for the purpose of having an arsenal of themes to use for client projects. Other members are those who produce many sites for their own purposes. And, in some cases, it just makes sense to join when the cost of membership is not much greater than the two or three themes you were planning to buy individually.

What do Theme Clubs Provide?

The clubs featured in this article provide commercial WordPress themes. Also referred to as “premium” themes, these are professionally developed themes that often include advanced features. The discussion of what makes a commercial/premium theme “premium” is out of the scope of this article (for the discussion, read Why Premium WordPress Themes? on my website). Also provided is support via a forum (and sometimes a helpdesk system), documentation, new releases, updates to existing themes and layered PSD or PNG source graphics.

Different clubs provide different types of themes. Larger clubs usually offer a wide variety of themes while others may focus more on a niche such as business themes. It is important to look at the types of themes currently available from a provider because they are likely indicators of what you will be getting for new releases. Don’t assume that every club will provide the types of themes your client projects demand. If you design sites for all types of clients, you will probably want to join clubs that produce themes covering different niches.

Comparing Theme Club Details

Let’s start taking a look at the theme clubs themselves. While there are dozens out there, I am only including 11 in this article that meet my narrow criteria. The reason for this is quality. There are clubs that might not be worth looking at. Based on my findings, these clubs range from those that show promise to those that many consider to be exceptional. You should draw your own conclusions based on your specific needs. I am not a customer of any of these companies, so my research was done from a pre-sale perspective.

Criteria For This Comparison

The theme club operators in this article meet the following criteria with at least one of their plans/packages.

• Offers renewable membership or an “all themes” package that includes future releases.
• Provides customer support for at least the lifetime of membership.
• Membership includes theme updates to ensure compatibility with latest versions of WordPress.
• Provides documentation.
• Allows use on multiple websites (including client websites).
• Uses GPL or Split GPL license.
• Actively produces new themes.
• Currently provides 10 or more themes.
• Provides a live front-end demo of themes.
• Exhibits professional-quality design work.
• Includes layered graphic files (Photoshop PSD or Fireworks PNG)
• Branding in theme footers can be removed.

WordPress is licensed under the GPL. Therefore, since theme code is derived from WordPress, themes must also be licensed under the GPL. Reputable theme sellers license their themes under the GPL or they use a Split GPL license. The latter means that the theme’s PHP code is GPL-licensed while external files (JavaScript, CSS, images etc.) that are not derived from GPL-licensed material are not.

Comparing Apples to Apples

Many theme clubs offer a more expensive “developer” membership that includes layered PSD or PNG files. Since this article is written for designers and developers, all pricing, numbers and calculations in the table and charts below are for “developer” plans and packages. Free themes are excluded from calculations. Some memberships include non-WordPress themes which are also excluded from this analysis.

A Side-by-Side Comparison

This table shows details about companies and their themes, costs, features and methods of support. Sellers are ordered by the number of paid themes that they currently provide.

Start Date
When WordPress themes were first made available by the provider.

Monthly Releases
A six month average from September, 2010 through February, 2011. It does not include free themes.

Min. Price for All
The lowest price you would pay for all themes (with source PSD or PNG files) if you joined, downloaded all themes and then canceled before the first renewal date.

Min. Cost Each
Min. Price for All divided by Paid Themes.

Framework
Means whether or not the club includes a theme framework that utilizes child themes.

Lifetime Support
Indicates that support is provided even after membership has ended.

Data current as of March 25, 2011. Monthly Releases considers paid themes released between September 1, 2010 and February 28, 2011. Pricing and support is for “developer” plans with multiple use licenses and layered graphics files.

A Note About Code

I was originally going to include a row in this table to show which providers use W3C valid XHTML/CSS code. Nearly every provider claimed that this was the case. However, the reality is that many themes don’t fully validate because they often use CSS3, Flash, third-party code (especially social media) and other reasonable bits of Web goodness that cause validation issues. A better claim for some providers may be that they strive to produce valid code whenever reasonably possible.

Regarding server-side code: not being a member of these themes clubs, I can’t draw any conclusions about the quality of their PHP code (organization, best practices, commenting etc). But maybe that’s a good topic for another study.

How Many And How Much

If you are visually-oriented like I am, then it might be beneficial to see the data presented in charts.

Number of Themes Now and To Be Expected

It is clear that some theme producers are just starting out while others are more established. It is important to be aware of how many themes you are getting access to when you first sign up. A large collection of themes is useful. It is also evidence of how hard the company has been working for its members from the beginning (consider the age of each company).

The total number of paid (non-free) WordPress themes in each provider’s collection as of March 25, 2011.

Something that is not immediately apparent by visiting theme club websites is how many themes they release each month. I don’t mean how many themes they tell you they will be releasing, but how many themes they have actually been releasing on a regular basis. The proof is in the pudding.

The average monthly paid WordPress theme releases from September 1, 2010 to February 28, 2011.

Assessing the Actual Cost

Most theme clubs require a one-time joining fee plus either a monthly or annual renewal fee. The chart below shows the actual cost of being a “developer” member for the first year. Theme clubs with a larger selection understandably cost more. However, there are exceptions such as Elegant Themes.

Also worth noting are StudioPress and Organic Themes which do not have recurring fees, so their costs will prove dramatically less than most others after a couple years. Cost should not be the sole determining factor, however. A good deal has to include themes you will actually use.

The total cost of each provider’s “developer” membership after one year.

If you want to take the “smash and grab” approach and are not necessarily interested in future releases or support, you can join and download all themes and then cancel before your renewal is due. This is a way to create your own one-time fee “all themes pack”. Look again at the table above to see which companies will provide you with lifetime support. The chart below shows the cost per theme you can expect when doing this.

The actual cost per WordPress theme from each provider when signing up, downloading all themes, then canceling before renewal.

A Closer Look At Each Theme Club

Much can be said about each theme club. Let’s take a more individualized look at what is offered by each provider.

WooThemes: Consistent Deliverer

South Africa
www.woothemes.com (Pricing Details)

WooThemes started in 2008 and has established itself as the largest club in terms of number of themes available. Their Developer Club Subscription costs $200 to start plus $20 per month. They provide support via their forum and have produced a wide range of resources including documentation for each theme plus tutorials and videos. WooThemes has been successful at engaging their community of customers with an active blog, job board, busy forums and even comic strips.

Kudos

• They promise two new themes monthly. Over the last six months, they have averaged 2.7 releases per month, excluding free themes. This says a lot about their commitment to provide for their members.
• WooThemes supports customers who have cancelled their subscriptions.
• They produce a wide variety of themes (33 niches according to ThemeSorter).
• Their Playground lets you experience the back-end of every theme.

Concerns?

One complaint is that WooThemes is expensive. However, I believe that the cost of their developer club is proportional to what it provides. They have the largest collection and release the most themes per month. They actually have the second-lowest minimum cost per theme of all sellers in this group.

Elegant Themes: Affordable Quality

United States

www.elegantthemes.com (Pricing Details, see Terms for developer license fee)

Elegant Themes started in 2008 and has developed a reputation of being one of the more prolific theme producers. They are known for their low cost and high quality. The cost is a mere $39/year plus a one-time fee of $89 if you plan on using their themes for client websites.

Kudos

• Affordability. They offer the most themes for the lowest yearly renewal fee.
• The quality of themes is much better than many would expect for the price paid.
• They averaged a healthy 1.7 new releases per month over the last six months.
• Elegant Themes provides a respectable variety of themes including not only blog, magazine/news and business themes but also portfolio themes and niche themes for real estate, events, product showcasing and more.
• They offer a 30-day money back guarantee.

Concerns?

The standard license allows for multiple use but only on your own sites. In order to create sites for clients, you must pay a one-time $89 fee for a developer license. This is still a great deal but unless you read the fine print, this is easy to miss. It also cannot be paid for at the time of sign-up (members pay for it as an upgrade). I don’t consider this to be a major concern, just something to be aware of before joining.

Templatic: Robust Variety

India

templatic.com (Pricing Details)

Templatic is an India-based company that produces a wide variety of WordPress themes. Especially notable are their full-featured e-commerce themes. With over 50 themes and more than one new release each month, they are one of the largest and fastest growing providers. Their club may be a good solution for those needing many different types of themes for client projects. Club membership is $299 plus $15 per month.

Kudos

• Large variety of well-designed themes. I was able to classify their themes into several dozen niches.
• They offer several full-blown e-commerce themes complete with shopping carts and online payment handling.
• They offer individual support via their helpdesk in addition to forum support.
• They continue to provide support after cancellation.

Concerns?

• Members have been told to expect two new releases monthly. However, from September, 2010 through February, 2011, they have averaged 1.2 new releases per month. Even when counting free themes, they have not met their own expectation. Still, they are releasing a useful amount of new themes regularly.
• The English used on parts of their website and theme demos is sometimes awkward which can come across as unprofessional.

StudioPress: Unlimited Everything

United States

studiopress.com (Pricing Details)

StudioPress is not technically a theme club. They are included in this group of providers because their Pro Plus All-Themes package ($249.95) includes all current and future theme releases plus lifetime support. This is in effect a membership without recurring fees. The simplicity of their “Unlimited Everything” philosophy is refreshing. They offer many business, gallery/portfolio and women’s interest themes produced by both StudioPress and talented collaborators.

Kudos

• No recurring fees.
• Lifetime support, updates and future releases.
• They have averaged 1.3 new releases per month during the last six months.
• Their popular Genesis Framework is included. This is a great tool for developers and more savvy WordPress users.
• StudioPress has a 30-day refund policy.
• Their selection of themes geared toward women is commendable.

NattyWP: Fading Away?

United States

www.nattywp.com (Pricing Details)

NattyWP has been around since 2008 and currently offers 28 premium themes plus future releases for their members. The cost is $300 per year. They have a selection of the most popular types of WordPress themes: magazine/news, business, portfolio and blog.

Kudos

• They offer support via a helpdesk. Most clubs do not provide this type of private/individual support.
• Members continue to receive support after cancellation.
• Their offerings cover the most common needs.

Concerns?

They have released only two new themes during the last six months (their frequency of releases was greater in the past). Their website looks the same as it did in 2008 and their forum seems to be inactive, so you have to wonder how much their heart is still in it.

WPZOOM: Second Wind

Moldova

www.wpzoom.com (Pricing Details)

WPZOOM redesigned their website very recently and with that introduced a membership option. They have averaged one new release per month over the last six months while selling themes individually. At the time they introduced their new theme club, they commented that they would be releasing one to three new themes per month. It sounds like they might be stepping it up a notch which would be a great benefit to new members. WPZOOM’s specialty over the last couple years has been magazine/news and portfolio themes.

The cost of their developer club is $299 for the first month then $19/month thereafter.

Kudos

• A dream for frequent magazine/news theme users.
• WPZOOM provides lifetime support even after a member cancels.

Concerns?

Developer club pricing is higher than other providers who offer more themes. I hope to see WPZOOM expand both the size and variety of their offerings for their new members.

Obox: Solid Offerings

South Africa

www.obox-design.com (Pricing Details)

Obox had its beginning as a web development company run by brothers David and Marc Perel. Two years ago they turned their attention to theme design and have built up a collection of 24 premium WordPress themes (more for Tumblr and Posterous). Their membership costs $125 to start then $15/month to maintain. You can expect about one new WordPress theme release per month. Their offerings are mostly made up of blog themes with a dash of magazine-style inspiration. Business and portfolio/gallery themes are also part of the collection.

Kudos

• A reputation for excellent support.
• High quality design work.
• The OCMX plugin is included and may be of interest to developers.

RocketTheme: Feature-packed

United States

www.rockettheme.com/wordpress (Pricing Details)

The first thing that struck me about RocketTheme when looking at their demos was the customization options that many of their WordPress themes provide. While most themes from other sellers come with several color schemes or styles, many of RocketTheme’s themes include user-friendly tools that let you create your own custom styles (go to the Crystalline demo and click “COLOR CHOOSER“ at the top-right).

The cost is $250 to start your RocketTheme membership then $200 each year for renewal. You will gain access to their collection which is mostly made up of themes for business, blog and magazine/news sites. Note that RocketTheme offers separate memberships for WordPress and Joomla.

Kudos

• Impressive customization options included with many themes.
• They have consistently delivered on their promise to release one new theme per month since they started selling WordPress themes in 2009.
• Their design style is unique and flashy.
• Many features are included with their themes, especially newer releases.

Themify: Fast Start

Canada

themify.me (Pricing Details)

Themify is a relatively new WordPress theme provider. They opened their doors last year and have 13 paid themes already. They are definitely one to watch. If they keep up their pace, they could end up as one of the leading clubs. Right now they have a small selection but manage to offer many different types of themes (such as microblogging, restaurant, news, business, portfolio). Variety is a good thing for a theme club and it looks like Themify realizes this and has made it a part of their growth plan.

The cost of their membership is $150 for the first month then $20 per month for renewal.

Kudos

• They have been working fast with 1.2 releases per month on average since last summer.
• Clearly aiming to build a variety of themes to meet many needs.

Concerns?

The cost is a concern considering their small size at the moment. They will have to deliver a high number of regular releases to justify their $20/month renewal fee.

Organic Themes: Still Growing

United States

www.organicthemes.com

Note: There is a “Buy All Themes” button on the top-right of their themes page. They do not have a page with details for their all-themes developer package. David Morgan of Organic Themes confirmed that this package “entitles the purchaser to current and future theme releases.”

Having launched in 2010, Organic Themes is another one of the newer WordPress theme providers. The company is based in a small Hawaiian town and run by David Morgan and Jeff Milone. The first thing to note about Organic Themes is that they sell an “all themes package” for developers. When you buy it, you get access to all of their current themes plus access to their future themes and support for as long as they are in business. This is in effect a one-time fee “membership”.

I don’t know if they plan to offer a formal membership with recurring fees when they are larger, but if they do (as WPZOOM just did), “all themes package” customers will probably feel very fortunate.

Kudos

• All themes package is like a “membership” with no recurring fees.
• Lifetime new releases, updates and support at no extra cost.
• A clear focus on quality over quantity.

Concerns?

• If you look at Organic Themes as a theme club, their recent low rate of releases would be a concern. However, they are not technically a theme club and thus do not promise a specific number of new releases. It is better to look at them as what they are, a company generous enough to provide future releases and support to buyers of their all themes package.
• There is no pricing or details page that explains the terms of the all-themes developer package. They told me that making such a page is high on their priorities list.

UpThemes: Gearing Up

United States

upthemes.com (Pricing Details)

UpThemes opened its doors in 2010 and has produced 10 paid WordPress themes. They recently added a new team member so there is good reason to believe that they will be producing more frequent releases. As with Themify, it appears that UpThemes is focusing on producing multiple types of themes for their members. So far they provide solutions for gallery/portfolio, coming soon, app showcase, blogging, charity/non-profit, band/musician and e-commerce.

Their membership costs $159 for the first month then $19 per month to renew. This is a young theme club worth keeping an eye on.

Kudos

• Members who cancel have lifetime support via the UpThemes forums.
• The variety of themes in their collection is very good even at this early stage of their existence.

Concerns?

The pricing page promises members one new theme each month. This has not been the case during the last six months even when considering free themes. It is possible that the promise was not made until very recently, however. We will have to see if the expectation is met during the next few months.

In Conclusion

Developer theme clubs can be useful to freelance professionals and companies who build many WordPress-powered websites. We have learned that different clubs have different types of themes, collection sizes, release frequencies and costs. Combine this with the fact that you have your own specific requirements and it becomes clear that not every club is a guaranteed match for you. You should ask yourself a few questions when deciding which theme club or clubs to join — if any at all — in order to make the best use of your budget.

First, ask yourself if the club produces the type of themes that you will actually use. A club that offers many nice-looking themes for a low price may seem like a good deal. But is it a good deal for you? What if most of their themes are magazine/news themes but your clients are small businesses? You should also ask yourself if a club will save you money. You may not need as many themes as you are paying for. In this case, your budget may be better spent purchasing themes individually from multiple providers.

I hope this survey of likely choices will make it easier for you to decide if a WordPress theme club can help you with your work.

Further Resources

The following articles relating to premium WordPress themes and providers may be of interest to you:

• Why Premium WordPress Themes?
  This explains what premium/commercial WordPress themes are and what they commonly include.
• Premium Themes: What’s Wrong With Pricing?
  What to look for in a commercial WordPress theme provider.
• Theme Grade Provider Reviews
  Detailed reviews of WordPress theme providers.
• How to find WordPress themes, quickly and easily
  Outlines the different ways that WordPress themes can be found.
• Why WordPress Themes are Derivative of WordPress
  This article explains in detail the whole issue of GPL licensing for WordPress themes.
• 100 Free High Quality WordPress Themes: 2010 Edition
  A showcase of free high quality themes that can compliment any freelancer’s theme club subscription.

(vf) (ik)

© Gliebster for Smashing Magazine, 2011. | Permalink | Post a comment | Smashing Shop | Smashing Network | About Us
Post tags: clubs, comparison, memberships, premium, themes, wordpress

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All you have to do to enter this competition is leave a comment on this post telling us what your favorite theme is from one of the bundle.

About the MOJO Theme Anniversary Bundle

The MOJO Themes First Anniversary Bundle will take place for 7 days only between the dates of April 18th (Monday) to April 24th (Sunday). The Bundle includes some of their most popular items from the marketplace. Basically, you can get your hands on $442 worth of items for only $25.

The bundle includes the 14 items below, including 10 WordPress themes, 2 WordPress plugins and 2 Tumblr themes.

WordPress Themes

WordPress Plugins

TumblrThemes

How to Enter

For a chance of winning one of these amazing MOJO-Theme bundles, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling us what your favorite theme is from the list above. The five winners will be chosen completely at random, with each winner receiving their bundle via email.

Best of luck to everyone

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With the majority of bloggers using WordPress as their CMS of choice, I feel that it’s only right we showcase some of the best places online to get commercial WordPress themes. So I scoured the web and grabbed up twenty five of the best theme companies out there. Some you may have heard of before, [...]

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You could take a look at free premium themes since 2007 and you will observe how much things have evolved. We have now awesome designs and the choice to use them free of charge! Of course, chances are that more people will use a free theme than a paid premium one, but you still can customize it a little bit to express your own online personality.

Do you want to impress with a nice premium and free WordPress theme? Here are 21 choices you can make.

Sight

Demo | Download

Paragrams

Demo | Download

Obscorp v2

Demo | Download

Newspress

Demo | Download

Simplo

Demo | Download

Designpile

Demo | Download

Journal Crunch

Demo | Download

Boldy

Demo | Download

All Tutorials

Demo | Download

Maimpok

Demo | Download

Rubidiumify

Demo | Download

Kryptonation

Demo | Download

Arsenicity

Demo | Download

Germaniumify

Demo | Download

Heliumified

Demo | Download

Aparatus

Demo | Download

Monte Cristo

Demo | Download

Bueno

Demo | Download

Placeholder

Demo | Download

Video

Demo | Download

Foliogrid

Demo | Download

(bellefoong)

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ThemeFuse was born from the passion for the things done right in every way. Starting from the original design concepts filled with details in every pixels, continuing with the clean code of the wordpress themes, and finishing with the best AfterCare Support there is.

Their aim is to shake up the premium wp industry, and show that wp themes companies don’t have to just keep making the same themes over and over again to be successful. According to their believes that the users want to try new themes, original themes, so it’s time to step up and bring some originality into the mix.

This contest will run from April 5, 2011 to April 15, 2011 and we will select the winners randomly by running MySQL query. Result can be announced any day before April 20, 2011 so keep visiting here or subscribe to our rss feed to get the latest updates. To participate in the contest to win free WordPress theme, All you have to do is :

Just tweet this:

Win a free copy of @ThemeFuse #WordPress Theme from @SmashingApps (RT to Enter)

1. Once you have tweeted, come back to this post and comment with a link to your tweet and put your valid email ID in the email box.

2. Make sure that you are following @SmashingApps and @ThemeFuse on twitter and subscribe our rss feed to track this contest and for future updates. If you don’t mind please hit the like button on ThemeFuse facebook page (they’ll notify the winners there)

3. And that’s it!

So, what are you waiting for now? Let’s participate in the contest and good luck!

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Besides embracing a minimalist approach for this project, I had another goal in mind for my template. I expressed the following in early conversations with WooThemes:

I’d like this design to appeal to more than just the web designer crowd, i.e. light on rounded corners, gradients, big buttons, and the like. If a graphic designer selling letterpress prints were to use this template — in addition to the guy creating icons and UI screens — I would be elated.

I think, or rather I hope, I’ve pulled that off. Look for the Brief WordPress theme in the WooThemes store soon.

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